Four men aged between 28 and 40 were arrested on suspicion that they facilitated the illegal arrivals of persons in the U.S., through Mexico, and in EU member states in exchange for €13,000-€15,000. Three of them admitted their guilt and cooperate with the investigation authority. At the request of prosecutors, the Ciocana Court of Chisinau decided that three of the men will be placed under house arrest, while the fourth men will be under judicial control, IPN reports.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Cases, when the persons reached the destination, they were able to ask for asylum from the U.S. authorities and this way obtained the right to stay and work.

Initially, the organizers found clients through social networking sites and then invited these to offices they rented in Chisinau. After the clients paid the tax, false documents about large assets and salaries were made for them and presented to the Consular Office of Mexico in Bucharest for applying for tourist visas.

The same scheme to falsify documents (employment contracts, permits of stay) had been used for eight years to obtain worker visas from the Consular Office of Poland in Chisinau. In these cases, the tax collected from clients varied between €250 and €650. The clients travelled illegally to Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, France and other EU member states and stayed there longer than the officially allowed 90 days.

During searches at the offices and homes of the four in Chisinau, there were seized passports of citizens of Moldova and Ukraine, photocopies of passports of the two states, fictitious employment contracts in Poland, bank cards and computers as well as four cars and ill-gotten money.

The Center for Combatting Trafficking in Persons and the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Cases are cooperating with the U.S. Embassy in Chisinau in order to identify all the persons whose illegal migration to the U.S. was organized by the identified criminal group.