Two people behind a "years-long, carefully orchestrated" scheme to defraud New Zealand’s immigration and citizenship systems have been sentenced to home detention.
Wijdan Taha Kareem Almajidi received nine and a half months’ home detention, while Hussein Hasan Dawood was sentenced to 10 and a half months, following convictions under the Immigration Act, Crimes Act and Citizenship Act.
Immigration NZ said the pair carried out a years-long campaign of deception involving false identities, fraudulent travel documents and repeated misrepresentation to authorities.
Investigators found Almajidi entered New Zealand in 2016 using the identity of Dawood’s sister, a New Zealand citizen who had left the country years earlier and never returned.
That identity was then used over several years to travel internationally and support fraudulent applications for a New Zealand passport, residence and citizenship.
The false identity was also used to register the birth of a child under incorrect details. Authorities said the pair falsely claimed their daughter was born in Iraq, when she was actually born in New Zealand, to conceal Almajidi’s unlawful immigration status at the time.
Immigration NZ general manager of compliance and investigations Steve Watson said the offending was deliberate and calculated.
“This wasn’t a mistake or a one-off lapse in judgement. It was a scheme built carefully and deliberately over time," he said.
Watson said the case undermined public confidence in the immigration system and relied on extensive work by investigators, including cooperation with the Department of Internal Affairs.
"When people go to such lengths to deceive the system, they undermine the fairness that New Zealanders expect and rely on. This case shows how sustained dishonesty can ripple across multiple systems and years."
The investigation required patience and close scrutiny, Watson said. with investigators gradually uncovering further layers of deceit.
"This was a carefully constructed web of deception, designed to withstand scrutiny and remain hidden for years. Our investigators methodically unravelled it, strand by strand."
He said the convictions carried a clear warning.
"Schemes like this may be carefully hidden, but they do not stay hidden forever."
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