10,000 School Acceptance Letters Used by Foreign Students May Be Fake: Immigration Dept.

Thousands of university and college acceptance letters used by foreign students applying to study in Canada this year may be fake, an official with Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada said at a Commons Citizen and Immigration committee meeting.
Bronwyn May, director-general of the International Students Branch, told the committee on Nov. 7 that more than 10,000 letters could not be verified by the IRCC and are “potentially fraudulent.”
The committee is reviewing a new system of verifying post-secondary acceptance letters introduced last year, and early signs are that the new process is working, said May.
The IRCC reviewed about 500,000 university and college applications and their attached Canadian school acceptance letters, she said. While 93 percent of acceptance letters were verified, more than 10,000 are still being analyzed and are “potentially fraudulent,” said May.
Of the unverified acceptance letters, 2 percent could not be confirmed with the school, 1 percent had been cancelled by the school, and in 2.7 percent of cases there was no response from the school.
There have been reports over more than a year of foreign students receiving falsified school acceptance letters, sometimes unwittingly, from fraudulent immigration consultants.