An immigration adviser caught selling a fake job at her husband’s company in taped phone conversations — after a migrant lost his first fake job there — has had her licence cancelled.
Heidi Castelucci, also known as Qian Yu, coached the migrant on how the $70,000 arrangement would work and how it should be hidden from authorities, with the Immigration Advisers Complaints and Disciplinary Tribunal upholding that complaint along with five others from visa applicants and describing the case as a “concerning pattern of behaviour”.
While working at Auckland firm Liberty Consulting, trading as Liberty Immigration, the migrant was first placed in a visa façade job that was later terminated, before being persuaded to resign and accept a second non-existent role as a $100,000-a-year business development manager at twice the salary. The tribunal found he was told to pay $70,000 for company support for his residence visa, fund his own salary and tax, and take cash-in-hand work elsewhere to support his family. He paid one $7,500 instalment before raising concerns and leaving New Zealand with his children, having paid a total of $25,588 when a reasonable immigration advice fee would have been between $2,000 and $4,000.
The tribunal said fake jobs strike at the heart of the immigration system and public trust, and that the involvement of a licensed adviser in creating such a scam was serious enough to justify cancellation of her licence, alongside a $4,000 fine.
Although Castelucci later expressed deep remorse and referred to personal, medical and psychological collapse, the tribunal concluded those circumstances arose after the scam had been set up and said it was not persuaded she had changed. Employment advocate May Moncur said the two-year maximum cancellation period was too short for dishonesty cases and argued lifetime bans should be available, warning that jobs were still being sold through “tokens” linked to accredited employers recruiting migrants.
She said some agents and proxies had recruited dozens of workers, generating millions in illegal income while migrants paid large premiums for jobs that did not exist, distorting the economy and undermining genuine employment opportunities. The Registrar of Companies has also begun action to remove Liberty Consulting from the companies register, while a new company established by Castelucci’s husband, Global Pathways Consulting, operates from the same Rosedale address.
Have they been deported yet?
These are foreign agents. Foreign to New Zealand’s culture and behaviour.
A measly fine for outlandish and frankly criminal behaviour? Why no jail? Why no extradition? We do not need scammers like that in Godzone.
So one immigrant pays out $25,588 to the scammer who receives a $4,000 fine and two year “suspension” of her licence.
I wonder how many other customers she has, and how many other identities and/or collaborators.
Ban for life sounds about right to me but of course, cheap imported labour fuels greedy corporate NZ. The whole system needs to be replaced with one where imports are only allowed, if local labour can not be sourced under stringent conditions, that make gaming the system, next to impossible. That, in turn, requires people to stop voting for globalist parties, who act against their self interest and that of their countrymen.
Why does New Zealand have independent immigration agents? Surely the government should be managing all aspects of immigration.
Another immigrant scamming other scammers and scamming the moral fabric of NZ.
Forced forfeiture of assets & sold to repay the money stolen then deportation or you advertise the punishment is worth the crime