A South American man, identified by police only as “Godoi”, has been sentenced to five years in prison for providing other foreigners with illegal Chinese visas.
Godoi used copies of his company’s business license and tax registration certificate, along with work contracts from his business partner and a fake seal, to secure Chinese residence permits for foreigners.
With the fake documents, Godoi applied for residence permits for foreigners at the city’s employment service center and the Exit-Entry Administration of Shanghai Public Security Bureau.
Police started suspecting late last year after a foreigner who applied for a residence permit submitted documents for a job position that was “significantly different†from his previous work experiences. Investigators also found that Godoi had helped foreigners set up companies in Shanghai through which they applied for work visas for others.
Police did not reveal how many foreigners applied through Godoi or their current status, but said Godoi profited more than 50,000 yuan (US$8,050) from the illegal services.
Two Chinese employees at Godoi’s company, a man surnamed Sun and another surnamed Zhang, were also punished. Sun was sentenced to a year and a half in prison with probation, while Zhang got a year in jail with probation. [source]
While police did not reveal the man’s identity or his company name, according to a comment left at the Shanghaiist, “Godoi” is Pedro Godoi, a Brazilian who moved to Shanghai in 2008 and ran Godoi Consulting as well as the now defunct English-language Settling Magazine.
According to officials, this is the first case of visa fraud involving a foreigner. However, it is not the first time a sentence has been delivered for selling fake visas to foreigners in China. In what the Ministry of Public Security has called the “largest case of the kind in many years;” a Nanjing man, Sun Haigang, was fined 60,000 RMB and sentenced to eight years in prison last September for selling illegal residence permits to foreigners. Sun’s six accomplices, from across China, were also sentenced.
Got to be careful these days! I always wondered about those ads that say they can get work visas…
Seems a harsh sentence. Really cracking down these days and how.
I suspect it’s a bit of a warning. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is quietly repatriated after a year in prison. But yeah, lots of crack-downs in the last couple years.
When I clicked on the Godoi consulting link, and the magazine link from the linkedin link you posted, i was redirected to a page that prompted me to install software to update my browser, so i think these sites may be compromised with malware.
Cheen, I’m guessing you weren’t running a VPN at the time? What you described sounds like DNS poisoning, which is a common censorship tactic employed through Chinese ISPs. Essentially, rather than give you a failed connection, they just redirect you to a random site. This made the news a couple months ago because it was redirecting people to adult content sites.
Dang… I, too, would hate to be sentenced to be in Shanghai for five years. O.o
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Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time
he stole $15,000 and fled to china when our child was dieing from cancer. would love to see him do some real jail time.
I was an acquaintance of his back in the USA, he did work for me in painting and fixing my cars, he was relatively honest. I think he might have been Shanghaied…The corruption in the government there is endemic…
i also had work done by him and ended up returning a Minivan I bought from him after 6 months. Not totally straight but had good intentions. Had Champaign aspirations but a beer budget.
Hi there, I just found this article and decided to write what I know to be true, as I worked for Mr. Godoi in Shanghai.
The police came first to our office to threaten him with backing up a false accusation the Minghan district of Shanghai was raising against one of our clients. They want Mr. Godoi to sign an accusation against the client so the government can take the person to jail and confiscate their bank account and businesses.
I know this because I saw it and threatened myself to do the same or else I would face consequences.
Mr. Godoi had a meeting with us, telling us that he was expecting serious problems and told us to contact our governments.
When I contacted the US consulate in Shanghai, reporting the situation, they didn’t care much.
A few days later, the police came to our office and took a few of us to the police station.
I was resented with a piece of paper to accuse this client of targeting me for reasons I don’t know.
I refused to sign and was freed after 10 straight hours of interrogations.
All the other foreigners refused as well, as far as I know.
Mr. Godoi was never released.
He was sent to a detention center with our manager and another office employee. Both Chinese
These two Chinese sign documents against Mr. Godoi, telling us that our work permits (for foreigners) were acquired with false documents, which is not true.
For that, he was accused of selling visas.
I came back to Boston and have never returned to China since.