A former British Airways supervisor who worked at London Heathrow Terminal 5 is on the run, after his very profitable side hustle was uncovered…
In this post:
British Airways supervisor profited from asylum seekers
This incident involves a 24-year-old former British Airways supervisor at Heathrow Terminal 5, who is accused of having abused his role for a period of five years. Long story short, he would help people fly to other countries without the correct visa documents, in order to help them claim asylum there.
It’s up to airline staff to check travel documents to make sure that someone is eligible to travel to a country, and this guy would conveniently ignore those requirements, for a fee. According to the investigation, the man would charge £25,000 (yow!) for each traveler he’d help.
Most people he would help would either be travelers coming from India to the UK on a temporary visitor visa, or UK-based asylum claimants who feared they might be deported. He’d then help them book tickets to Canada (generally to Toronto or Vancouver), and he’d mark them in the system as having their travel documents checked. Then when they’d land in Canada without the correct documents, they’d claim asylum.
It’s pretty wild to think that he’d charge £25,000 per person he helped — that’s a lot of money! On top of that, this went on for a long time, because if he was charging £25,000 per person and if he earned £3 million this way, that would mean he had roughly 120 “customers” for this scheme.
How the British Airways supervisor got caught
This situation apparently came to light when immigration authorities in Canada reached out to their counterparts in the United Kingdom, regarding the consistent influx of people arriving in Toronto and Vancouver without the correct documents, requesting asylum.
When an investigation was performed, it was determined that the travel documents for all of these people had been checked by the same person at Heathrow.
The man was arrested on January 6, 2024, but posted bail. He then went missing, and is believed to have flown to India, where he has reportedly bought several homes. Police in the UK are now working with counterparts in India to try to find this man, and bring him back to the UK.
Bottom line
A British Airways supervisor exploited his authority to check travel documents, by marking travelers as having valid travel documents when they didn’t actually have them. The man wasn’t doing this out of the kindness of his heart, but rather is accused of charging £25,000 per person for this. Those people would then fly to Canada, where they’d seek asylum.
Once immigration authorities in Canada noticed the pattern with British Airways flights, they eventually determined that one person was behind all of this. He is now on the run, as he flew from the UK to India after posting bail.
What do you make of this British Airways asylum scheme?
This man should have to return the fees he charged the people besides the other consequences. With what money did he pay the bail? Oh yes the money that he made from those "clients."
In the UK system, bail is agreed based on risk/consequence, not ability to pay.
Doesn't look like that was evaluated correctly here though!
24 year old supervisor is all I needed yo know. No major airline in the world does that.
Would BA not be fined for this too?
It’s certainly the case that the UK government fines BA (and any other airline) for every person they fly into the UK without the correct visa or other immigration status. Thought that could be part of the government’s attempts to create a “hostile environment” to deter immigrants (except Russian billionaires).
I’d assume many other governments would do the same.
Wow! I’m surprised he only did it to YYZ or YVR and not US cities.
Lucky (can I call you Lucky?) provides a link to the source article; I recommend you all read it for more info instead of talking out of your a**. For example, there you would see that the BA supervisor had a partner in crime.
The problem is here is that BA hired a 19 year old to the role of supervisor when this scheme has been going on for 5 years, now 24 y.o. I am in full support of hiring younger workers but how did he get supervisor for such an important role at 19, nepotism much BA!?!?!
Supervisor covers a broad range of roles, my guess he was just a team leader looking after a small team of checkin agents.
It doesn't say he was a supervisor when he started the scheme. This can easily be done by a regular check-in agent.
This person is clearly a small cog in a very big wheel, the bread crumbs start at the immigrants home country and don’t end in Canada.
It seems very unlikely a 24 year old would have the seniority to be able to pull off something so elaborate.
For starters, wouldn't they need to always ensure they were working specific flights? How would a 24 year old even do this?
Something doesn't add up. There are document checks in India at check-in & exit immigration that checks you have a valid visa for destination(and transit if needed) followed by more document checks at LHR during boarding even if you already have a boarding pass issued elsewhere. I really doubt its one 24 year old running this racket!
All one needs to enter the UK from India is a valid passport and proof you can support yourself while you're in the UK to get a standard visitor/tourist visa, which is good for 6 months. So if these folks could pay this guy over $31,500 to get them into Canada, they could probably get the visitor visa to get to the UK...I doubt these people are telling UK immigration officers upon landing that their final destination is really Canada...
Have you ever had to apply for a UK visa? Its far more painful than getting a Canada visa. And then will people who have made it to UK want to go to Canada to claim asylum?
Even if they manage to get into UK - there are 2 document checks - at check-in and again during boarding.
This whole story makes no sense - lots of info missing.
This guy was not helping folks go from India to Canada; he was helping them once they were already in the UK: "He’d then help them book tickets to Canada (generally to Toronto or Vancouver), and he’d mark them in the system as having their travel documents checked. Then when they’d land in Canada without the correct documents, they’d claim asylum." If they were marked as "Docs Ok" in the system already for immigration, they'd...
This guy was not helping folks go from India to Canada; he was helping them once they were already in the UK: "He’d then help them book tickets to Canada (generally to Toronto or Vancouver), and he’d mark them in the system as having their travel documents checked. Then when they’d land in Canada without the correct documents, they’d claim asylum." If they were marked as "Docs Ok" in the system already for immigration, they'd likely be able to get their boarding passes with little issue, and only have their passport checked at boarding.
At 24 he had been made supervisor and had been working this scam for years? Alone? Someone set him up for this hussle. Time to dig deeper. There will be others involved.
This kind of thing typically requires a network to find desperate clients when trying to keep the operation going (even as there are ways to reliably find such clients without having a standing network of other people willfully participating in the scam). So of course there will probably be some others involved. Presumably, he absconded and went to try to hide abroad to try to delay or avoid ending up providing even more state’s evidence...
This kind of thing typically requires a network to find desperate clients when trying to keep the operation going (even as there are ways to reliably find such clients without having a standing network of other people willfully participating in the scam). So of course there will probably be some others involved. Presumably, he absconded and went to try to hide abroad to try to delay or avoid ending up providing even more state’s evidence to be used against him and/or others.
It will be interesting to see how fast he is found in India and what happens to him after the Indian authorities get him. Modi and Sunak are (unfortunately) buddies of sorts when it comes to a lot of things, and so I suspect that Modi & Co will boot him back for prosecution by CPS in the UK.
For how long was this 24 year-old South Asian BA employee/supervisor operating this scam scheme? It shouldn’t have taken too many such incidents for BA to have figured out where the systemic exploit was taking place and who was the perpetrator. But BA management types and their favorites are too often less the brightest tools in the tool box than pretentious wannabe show-offs and choose to go along to get along when really they should...
For how long was this 24 year-old South Asian BA employee/supervisor operating this scam scheme? It shouldn’t have taken too many such incidents for BA to have figured out where the systemic exploit was taking place and who was the perpetrator. But BA management types and their favorites are too often less the brightest tools in the tool box than pretentious wannabe show-offs and choose to go along to get along when really they should not do that if they have true integrity.
It was going on for nearly 5 years? Wow. That speaks to the competence level of the airline management/employees and that BA wasn’t getting fined enough money by foreign governments to shut the scam down sooner.
Sounds like it's an airport or security employee & not BA. May want to Google confirmation bias.
LHR and LHR security screeners don’t have access to the PNR with an ability to mark the record as the passenger being cleared for the international travel docs check for the ticketed destination.
Well if the UK had a humane government with a working asylum system instead of the fascists who run the country now there wouldn't be any need for this scheme. Not that this guy is a hero, but there is a much bigger problem in the UK's asylum system. And if anyone disagrees with me, or says something racially coded, reconsider your opinion and educate yourself and also acquire some empathy because I won't argue with anyone on this.
Nearly all Asylum claims are false. It’s a racket for illegals to pretend they are not criminals. Take Mexico for example or India. Those are advanced countries with poverty but also advanced systems. No one should be claiming asylum from there or transiting through there and not claiming asylum there. How come no rich countries like China or Japan or wealthy Middle Eastern kingdoms are forced to accept millions of illegals each year but Western...
Nearly all Asylum claims are false. It’s a racket for illegals to pretend they are not criminals. Take Mexico for example or India. Those are advanced countries with poverty but also advanced systems. No one should be claiming asylum from there or transiting through there and not claiming asylum there. How come no rich countries like China or Japan or wealthy Middle Eastern kingdoms are forced to accept millions of illegals each year but Western countries are. It’s ridiculous.
No asylums period.
Wealthy “Middle Eastern” countries have lots of Palestinian refugees and their descendants as resident foreign workers.
Mexico also has people who claim asylum there. Sometimes they too refuse asylum claims and ship people back to South America and elsewhere. Recently was talking to some European government officials about a family in a high-income EU country being ordered deported to a country of one parent’s citizenship even as the other parent and all other ties are...
Wealthy “Middle Eastern” countries have lots of Palestinian refugees and their descendants as resident foreign workers.
Mexico also has people who claim asylum there. Sometimes they too refuse asylum claims and ship people back to South America and elsewhere. Recently was talking to some European government officials about a family in a high-income EU country being ordered deported to a country of one parent’s citizenship even as the other parent and all other ties are in Mexico. Mexico has repeatedly refused to accept the asylum claim of the parent who came into Europe illegally and also don’t care about the family reunification claim of the parent being deported due to that parent having previously violated Mexican immigration laws and who knows what else. The young school kids are also being packed to a country in the Americas where the only tie is one parent’s citizenship and the other parent and children has neither citizenship nor a right of residence. This kind of thing is a global dynamic. Just look at how Pakistan’s government is dealing with people who are or whom the Pakistanis think are Afghans. And Pakistan has long been home to one of the bigger refugee populations in the world.
Eh, if they can save 25k in India (with far lower wages and is more than the average American has) I'm assuming they will contribute positively to this country. In any case we need to decrease illegal immigration and significantly increase legal immigration. Americans that marry Europeans face multi-year processes in many cases and its ridiculous.
That's a fairly lofty claim, considering that it's accompanied by a grand total of (checks notes) zero evidence.
Not quite zero evidence. Well above 50% of all asylum claims made worldwide are adjudicated as non-credible. The credibility of the adjudication process is another story though!
No one can disagree or debate your ideas? Now who's the authoritarian...
Well.....aren't you special.
Cannot trust Indians. The same people that pretend to be a friend of the West, yet get on their knees for Putin. Avoid!
Please spare us the anti-Indian diatribe. I despise what Modi and other Indian fascist forces mean, but scams are a product of more than just exposure to massive corruption and not limited to peoples of any cultural background.
In many ways, the UK is much like the US in being a masterclass of legalized corruption at home while being a seriously corrupting influence in less developed countries.
Don’t dispute that about Indians but the biggest enemies of the west are right at home when speech is criminalized in Europe and Canada, Christians are bankrupted by the govt. for not baking a cake, and people who defend themselves from violent attack are arrested for self defense. No leader is good but at least Putin supports the traditional family structure and isn’t propagandizing kids in schools like done in the U.S. These same people...
Don’t dispute that about Indians but the biggest enemies of the west are right at home when speech is criminalized in Europe and Canada, Christians are bankrupted by the govt. for not baking a cake, and people who defend themselves from violent attack are arrested for self defense. No leader is good but at least Putin supports the traditional family structure and isn’t propagandizing kids in schools like done in the U.S. These same people in the West who are Zionists are the ones who support open borders and support the fake asylum racket.
Part of the problem is the U.K. serves Indians as opposed to Anglo Saxon or Celtic people. We have scams with Nigerian princes and Indian call centers because of the open borders that have devastated Britain. It’s not Putin who supports open borders. It’s all the people who hate Putin who want open borders.
Of course, we can’t trust India or Turkey just like we can’t trust Western globalist governments. We shouldn’t trust anyone.
Can’t trust “white” “Christian nationalists”, as they are the biggest enemies of “the West”. Just look at how they support that anti-American, pro-Putin freak clown Trump. Wonder how they deal with the likelihood that Jesus “Christ” was not “white” and that he preached strongly against the behavior of people like Trump.
David, I really hope you're being paid by the Russian government because that's a hell of a post for somebody doing it for free. Anybody claiming that Putin of all people cares about anything but his own power and wealth is not experiencing the same reality as the rest of us.
Yeah like Putin invaded a sovereign country killing thousands of people in the process. Did you miss that bit? Suggesting he's not that bad because someone in the US faced a legal issue over a cake is barmy.