Smuggling university shock -Ghana Involved

International gangs are using university conferences as a means to smuggle illegal immigrants, it emerged tonight.

The University of Ulster (in UK) drew attention to the scam after it discovered an international software conference planned for Belfast next month was receiving an unusually high number of applications from Nigeria.

One letter sent to the organisers from a person purporting to represent a ``computer and software firm with branches in Africa and Asia`` said it intended to send some delegates to the conference at W5, Belfast`s science and innovation centre at Belfast`s Odyssey complex.

The writer asked: ``Will it be possible for you to arrange an invitation letter for them to enable them to obtain necessary travelling documentation to attend your event?

``We will send their name and passport number as soon as we get your reply.``

Several untraceable e-mail applications were followed by telephone calls asking for formal invitations to the conference on April 8-10 which is being billed as the most prestigious software gathering ever to have taken place in Northern Ireland.

However when the organisers asked for payment, they received one credit card which turned out to be fraudulent.

Further inquiries by the University of Ulster of other UK universities revealed bogus applications for conferences have been common over the past year.

False applications came from Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and Pakistan.

In all cases, those who applied demanded formal invitations to have their travel documents processed but stopped their correspondence when payment for the delegates was demanded.

The head of the university`s school of information and software engineering Professor David Bustard said the scam was only discovered when one applicant`s credit card turned out to be fraudulent.

``If we had not been suspicious the payment could have been processed as genuine.

``It shows that someone was really determined to get to the conference.

``I would like to believe that they are so impressed with the conference they are prepared to engage in criminal activity to get to it but I`m sure the truth is much more sinister.``

Prof Bustard said the university wanted to alert the organisers of other conferences.

He urged organisers to demand payment before releasing any paperwork and make this policy explicit on their website to ``avoid or reduce the problem``.