Unlicensed adviser gets 7-year jail term

Sentence is one of stiffest given to an immigration consultant Angelina Codina has been sentenced to seven years in jail.

An unlicensed immigration consultant has been slapped with a seven-year jail sentence for giving immigration advice and counselling an applicant to lie — conduct an Ontario court described as “evil.”

Angelina Codina, 60, a disbarred Toronto lawyer, was also ordered to refund more than $30,000 to four of her former clients. This is one of the stiffest sentences handed to an unlicensed immigration consultant.

In February, a jury found Codina guilty of five charges under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which carries a maximum sentence for an offence at two years imprisonment or a fine of $100,000, or both.

“Unscrupulous immigration consultants in Canada are in a special position to thwart the system by advising people outss can profitably tell in order to gain admission,” Ontario Superior Court of Justice Anne Molloy wrote in her sentencing reasons released this week.

“The result is that unqualified, and often undesirable, applicants are able to successfully enter Canada by fraudulent means, taking the places of other more deserving candidates. These are the evils this legislation is meant to address.”

The charges against Codina, operator of Codina International, spanned three years from 2011 to 2014, and included four counts of offering advice on immigration matters without a license and one count of counselling a client to misrepresent facts on an immigration application.

By law, only a lawyer in good standing or a licensed immigration consultant can offer immigration advice for a fee. Codina is neither. Although her company had employees, including some who were licensed to provide legal advice to immigration clients, the court said each of the offences of which she was convicted involved vising or her offering personally to represent either advising clients.

“This was an organized and sophisticated endeavour operated for profit without regard to the requirements of the law. There were four separate offences involving four sets of clients, all of whom suffered harm. That places this offence the upper levels of seriousness for crimes,” Molloy wrote.

“Ms. Codina’s level of blame-worthiness is also at the upper end of the scale. She masterminded the whole scheme.”

According to the court, in 1998, Codina, who attended University of Ottawa law school according to her LinkedIn page, was sentenced to six months imprisonment after being found guilty of fraudulently creating a document and cheating Ontario legal aid of $20,000. As a result, she was disbarred in Ontario.

Around the same time, Codina, who also had a legal practice in Manhattan, was facing 28 charges, including “grand larceny, scheme to defraud and the

f law” in the United States, the court said. She was eventually convicted in 2004 and served five y she was released and deported to Canada in 2008, where she continued to operate businesses providing immigration advice, the court said.

In one case spanning between 2012 and 2014, a client paid $9,500 to Codina International to represent his sister-in-law and her family to immigrate to Canada from Iran and was advised to provide false information in their application through an intracompany transfer scheme Codina came up with, according to the Ontario court. The client refused to lie and later reported Codina’s conduct to authorities.

“The need to separate Ms. Codina from society is also a factor in sentencing. Typically, this factor arises where the offender is violent and likely to harm people if not put in prison,” the judge said.

“Ms. Codina does not fall into that category. She does, however, represent a threat to the community.”

Molloy said separate offences involving separate victims would normally attract consecutive sentences. Codina’s offences would be a combined 10 years , the of imprisonment. However the court took mitigating factors into consideration.

“Ms. Codina is already 60 years old. She has limited productive working years ahead of

years old and she will therefore have limited opportunity to spend any further time with her,” Molloy wrote in explaining the reduction of Codina’s jail term to seven years. Codina was given a two-year credit for time served.