Brijesh Mishra: The Fake Admission Letter Case That Shook Canada's Student Visa System

Brijesh Mishra is a former education agent from Jalandhar, Punjab, who gave Indian students fake acceptance letters to Canadian colleges between 2016 and 2020. On 29 May 2024 he pleaded guilty in a Vancouver court to three offences under Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, including misrepresentation, and was sentenced to three years in prison (CBC News, 29 May 2024). Some of the students he sent to Canada were later ordered to leave, years after they arrived. A joint government task force had reviewed 109 linked cases by 30 August 2024 and found 62 of the students to be genuine (IRCC question period note, September 2024).

That is the short answer. The longer one matters if you are about to hand an agent your passport, your marks sheets and your family's savings.

Imagine you are 19, in a village outside Jalandhar. Your cousin's friend went to Canada through an agent in town, and now he sends photos from Brampton. Your father meets the agent. The agent takes your passport details, your transcripts and your IELTS score. You never fill in a single college form yourself. A few weeks later you collect an acceptance letter from his office. It has a college logo. Your family pays in cash, about Rs 16 lakh, with no receipt. You fly out believing you are a student.

Then you land, and the college has no record of you.

Five years later, when you apply for permanent residence, an officer looks at that first letter again. That is when your real trouble starts.

This page sets out what the public record shows, step by step: what Mishra did, what happened to him, what happened to the students, and the checks that would have caught the fraud before any money changed hands.

Key facts about the Brijesh Mishra case

Who is Brijesh Mishra?

Mishra ran an education and migration agency in Jalandhar. The Indian Express reported on 24 June 2023 that he was from Darbhanga in Bihar, that Jalandhar police had arrested him once before, in 2013, while he ran a firm called "Easy Way Immigration Agency", and that he opened "Education Migration Services" in 2014. In CBC's coverage the agency is credited as "Education and Migration Services".

He was not licensed to give Canadian immigration advice. In Canada, only lawyers, paralegals, Quebec notaries and consultants registered with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants may charge for it (IRCC, updated 6 January 2025). One of the five Canadian charges against him was exactly that: "Unauthorized Representation or Advice for Consideration".

How did the fake admission letter scheme work?

The clearest account comes from the agreed statement of facts read in court by the federal Crown prosecutor, Molly Greene, as reported by CBC News on 29 May 2024. Crown and defence both accepted it.

1. The referral. Students "typically came from a modest background in the Indian state of Punjab" and were referred to Mishra by family or friends.
2. The hand-over. He told them to apply to several schools. They gave him their passport information, transcripts and English test results. "They did not apply to any schools themselves."
3. The letter. Students were told they had been accepted and collected the acceptance letter from his office.
4. The money. He charged application fees, tuition, immigration fees and consulting fees. "Families would usually pay in cash without receipts."
5. The arrival. In Canada, students tried to enrol and found they had never been admitted.
6. The cover story. When they called him, he sometimes helped them enrol at another school. Sometimes he avoided them and their families altogether.

The Indian Express described the cover story in more detail: after students arrived, he "would inform them that seats were not available in the colleges mentioned in the offer letters", and ask them to join another college or wait for the next intake. "In some cases, he returned the college fees, but in several cases, he did not."

That switch is the clever part. A student who quietly enrolled at a second college, got a new permit and graduated had no reason to look back at the first letter. The fake letter stayed buried in the file, a time bomb, until the student applied for permanent residence and an officer checked the whole history.

Ask yourself one question. If you never spoke to the college yourself, how would you know the letter was real?

How much did students pay?

Reports put it in lakhs of rupees per student. The Indian Express said Mishra charged "an average of Rs 16 lakh from each student for visa-related services and college admissions". That one fee bundled tuition, the agent's charges and the visa work, so no one outside the agency could tell which part went where.

Cash with no receipt left two problems behind. Families had nothing to prove what they had paid, and the colleges had never received the tuition in the first place, because the tuition never went to them.

For scale: in 2026 a study permit application costs CAN$150 (IRCC). Tuition is paid to the college, and IRCC's advice is blunt: "Always pay tuition fees directly to the school."

Were 700 Indian students deported from Canada?

No. The "700" number spread fast in March 2023, but the Canadian government says it was wrong. An IRCC briefing note for the minister states that a 14 March 2023 article "falsely reported that the CBSA 'issued deportation notices to over 700 Indian students whose visa documents were found to be fake'" (IRCC question period note, received 6 September 2024).

What the official records do show:

• Three investigations, not one man. The cases came from three large CBSA investigations into potentially fraudulent acceptance letters and study permits dating back to 2018. They began as probes into organised crime and also involved Vietnamese and Chinese nationals (same IRCC note).
• 285 cases linked to the task force. A joint IRCC and CBSA task force was set up in June 2023 to review students facing removal. It counted 285 cases after duplicates were removed.
• Results by 30 August 2024. 109 cases reviewed. 13 people left Canada before the Immigration and Refugee Board decided their case. Of the other 96, 62 were found to be genuine students and 34 were not. 41 genuine students were given temporary resident permits of up to three years.
• Mishra's own victims. His lawyer, Gagan Nahal, told CBC that 12 victims came forward during the CBSA investigation. Jalandhar police told The Tribune in June 2025 that he had duped "over 200 students". No official source ties a single total to Mishra alone.

So the honest answer is: dozens of students faced removal, the government reviewed them one by one, and most of those reviewed so far were found to be genuine. The figure of 700 deportations does not appear in any official record we found.

Why were students punished for an agent's fraud?

This is the part that shocks most families. The fake letter was the agent's work. The consequences landed on the student.

Canadian law makes you responsible for everything in your application, whoever prepared it. IRCC says it plainly: "Whether you apply on your own or get help submitting your application, you are responsible for the information in the application" (IRCC). A false document is misrepresentation, and misrepresentation can mean refusal, removal and a five-year ban.

There is a narrow exception for an "innocent mistake". A Federal Court case from 29 May 2023 shows how narrow it is. In 2023 FC 747, an Indian student's acceptance letter and tuition receipt, filed by an agent in India in 2019, were both fake. The tribunal accepted that he "honestly believed" he was not lying. It still found the belief unreasonable, because he and his father had put "blind faith" in the agent despite "red flags". They had tried to reach the college once, by phone, and the call did not connect. The tribunal held that one attempt was "insufficient". The court dismissed his challenge. That case is not linked to Mishra in the judgment, but it shows the test every student in this story faced.

Think of it like buying a car through a middleman. If the papers turn out to be forged, the police take the car from the person driving it, even if that person paid in good faith.

The task force was a political answer to that hard legal rule. In June 2023 the then minister, Sean Fraser, said: "International students who are not found to be involved in fraud will not face deportation" (IRCC, 14 June 2023). Students found genuine received temporary resident permits, open work permits and open study permits, and IRCC said the misrepresentation finding would not count against their future applications, including for permanent residence (IRCC note, September 2024).

Not everyone was cleared. IRCC listed reasons for "non-genuine" findings: ongoing criminal charges, being "complicit in using fraudulent documents", earlier use of human smugglers, and "stagnant or illogical study progression", such as short stints at several schools with no logic from one to the next.

The students' side

Some students spoke publicly. Lovepreet Singh camped outside a CBSA office near Toronto for 12 days in 2023. He told CBC: "[My family] sacrificed their whole life savings to sponsor my education here and after five, six years … I'm facing deportation. My dream is shattered" (CBC News, 8 June 2023). He had since studied at a different school in Montreal on a new permit. His removal, set for 13 June, was stayed on 10 June (Indian Express).

Students and supporters held a sit-in outside the CBSA office in Ontario from 29 May 2023. A student group sent Punjab's chief minister a list of six other Punjab agents it wanted investigated (Indian Express). We found no public charges against those six.

Some families also asked why colleges did not spot the problem. That question has been raised in the press. We found no finding by any court or regulator against a Canadian college in this case.

Timeline of the Brijesh Mishra case

• 2013. Jalandhar police arrest Mishra while he runs "Easy Way Immigration Agency" (Indian Express).
• 2014. He opens Education Migration Services in Jalandhar.
• 2016 to 2020. The period of the fraudulent letters agreed in the Canadian case (CBC).
• 2018 to 2019. Most of the affected students travel to Canada (Indian Express).
• October 2022. Mishra enters Canada on a tourist visa, which later expires (CBC).
• March 2023. Students facing removal go public. Jalandhar police register a case on 17 March, and the agency's licence is cancelled on 21 March (Indian Express).
• 14 June 2023. Minister Fraser announces the task force.
• 23 June 2023. CBSA lays five charges. CBC reports the arrest was in Surrey, British Columbia; the Indian Express reported it as an airport arrest. The CBSA release does not say where.
• 27 October 2023. IRCC announces letter-of-acceptance verification from 1 December 2023.
• 29 May 2024. Mishra pleads guilty to three counts and is sentenced to three years. "I'm sorry," he told the court. "I cannot change the past, but I can make sure I do not do it again in the future" (CBC).
• 30 August 2024. Task force figures: 109 of 285 cases reviewed, 62 genuine.
• 24 June 2025. Mishra is arrested at Delhi airport on return to India and handed to Jalandhar police (The Tribune).

What Mishra and his lawyer said

His lawyer, Gagan Nahal, told CBC: "I would say he did show genuine remorse. The pleas that were entered today were clearly a demonstration of his remorse because he did have a right to run a trial in this." Mishra and his lawyers also said his family in India had been harassed by relatives of the alleged victims.

In India, the police account is different in tone. Jalandhar's ADCP Harinder Gill told The Tribune in June 2025 that Mishra "has admitted his role". The charges in India are allegations. We found no public charge sheet or verdict there as of October 2026.

What changed after the case

The Mishra scandal pushed Canada to fix the gap it exploited: nobody checked the acceptance letter with the college before issuing the permit.

Letter-of-acceptance verification. From 1 December 2023, post-secondary colleges must confirm every applicant's letter of acceptance directly with IRCC (IRCC, 27 October 2023). Canada's Auditor General reported that the system checked 841,403 letters between December 2023 and September 2025. Of those, 12,131 (1.4%) were "flagged for potential fraud" and 8,666 were cancelled by the college (Office of the Auditor General, tabled 23 March 2026).

The trend. In 2025, IRCC verified over 368,000 letters and flagged 4,900 as "no-match". In January 2026 it was 265 out of 15,700 (IRCC committee note, 22 April 2026). The note adds that every "no match" is reviewed by an officer, who asks the applicant for a new letter before deciding.

Old cases are still surfacing. The same Auditor General report found 800 study permits issued between 2018 and 2023 where applicants had used fraudulent documents or misrepresented information. Letters filed before verification began can still be checked later, the way Mishra's were.

The "switch college" route is closed. Since 8 November 2024, students must get a new study permit to change schools, according to IRCC, so a quiet transfer after arrival no longer works.

What would a fake letter be worth today? Far less to a scammer, because it would likely fail at the first check. That pushes fraud elsewhere: fake "guaranteed admission" offers, fake scholarships and agents who never file the application at all.

How to check your Canadian letter of acceptance is real

Every one of these checks is free. Together they take less than an hour.

1. Apply yourself, or watch it happen. The agreed facts say Mishra's students "did not apply to any schools themselves". Create your own account on the college's application portal, or sit next to your adviser while they do it with your email address.
2. Find the college on the DLI list. Search the official designated learning institutions list and note the DLI number. Check it matches the number on your letter.
3. Have the letter sent to you by the college. IRCC advises: "Avoid fraud by having the DLI send the letter of acceptance directly to you."
4. Write to the college's international admissions office. Use the email address on the college's own website, not one from the agent. Send your student ID and ask them to confirm the offer and the programme. Keep the reply. One unanswered phone call was not enough for the court in 2023 FC 747.
5. Pay tuition straight to the college. Use the payment details on the college website or your student portal. Never pay tuition into an agent's account or in cash.
6. Get a receipt for every rupee. IRCC tells applicants to get "a written contract and breakdown of the application fees" and "a signed receipt for every payment".
7. Check the adviser. If anyone charges you for Canadian immigration help, look them up on the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants register. An agent in India can legally help you choose a course, but cannot charge for Canadian immigration advice unless authorised. Our guide on ghost consultants explains why some agents keep their names off your forms.

Want a quick reading of an offer before you pay? Run it through the free checker below. It flags the warning signs in this case, such as money going to an agent instead of the institution.

Red flags from the Mishra case you can test yourself

IRCC lists more warning signs, including anyone who "promises you a letter of acceptance from a DLI if you pay them", or asks you "to send documents or payment through social media". If you see one, stop and check before you pay anything more.

What if you already used an agent like this?

Do not panic, and do not ignore it.

• Check your letter now. Email the college's admissions office and ask if your original offer is on their records. If it is, keep their reply with your papers.
• Gather your proof. Payment records, chats, the agent's name and address, and every letter you received. In the task force reviews, genuine students had to show they were deceived.
• Get proper advice before you file anything else. A Canadian immigration lawyer or a CICC-registered consultant can tell you whether to correct the record and how. Our guide on misrepresentation bans and your options explains what a finding means.
• Report the agent. CBSA's tip line is 1-888-502-9060 (CBSA). In India, file a police complaint where the agent operates.

The honest lesson

The students in this story did what millions of families do. They trusted an agent recommended by people they knew, because the system looked too complicated to handle alone. Most of them were telling the truth when they said they did not know.

Trust was what the scheme ran on. Every check above swaps trust for a record you can see: a portal login, a college email, a receipt, a register entry. None of it needs a lawyer, and all of it can be done from home.

Before you pay a single lakh, picture yourself five years from now, applying for permanent residence. An officer opens your file and reads your first acceptance letter. Will you be calm, because you watched that letter come from the college, or will you be hoping?

If you want a second opinion on the whole route before you commit the money, our plan check is a 60-minute call with a person who has no commission riding on your choice of college. It does not replace a lawyer if your case already has a problem.

For the wider picture, read bogus colleges and student visa mills and how to check if a college or university is real.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Brijesh Mishra?

Brijesh Mishra is an education agent from Jalandhar, Punjab, originally from Darbhanga, Bihar, who ran a firm reported as Education Migration Services. Between 2016 and 2020 he gave Indian students fake acceptance letters to Canadian colleges. He pleaded guilty in Vancouver on 29 May 2024 to three offences under Canada's Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and was sentenced to three years in prison (CBC News, 29 May 2024).

Is Brijesh Mishra in jail?

He served his Canadian sentence, which counted the time he spent in custody after his June 2023 arrest. On 24 June 2025 he was arrested at Delhi airport after returning to India and handed to Jalandhar police, who said nine FIRs were registered against him (The Tribune, 25 June 2025). We found no public verdict in the Indian cases as of October 2026.

How many students did Brijesh Mishra cheat?

No official figure ties a total to Mishra alone. His lawyer said 12 victims came forward during the CBSA investigation. Jalandhar police told The Tribune in June 2025 that he duped "over 200 students". The government task force reviewed 285 linked cases, which came from three investigations involving several agents.

Were 700 Indian students deported from Canada because of fake letters?

No. IRCC says a March 2023 report that CBSA "issued deportation notices to over 700 Indian students" was false. By 30 August 2024 the task force had reviewed 109 cases: 62 students were found genuine and 34 were not, and 13 left Canada before a decision. Students found genuine received temporary resident permits.

Is Education Migration Services Jalandhar legit?

Jalandhar district authorities cancelled the firm's licence on 21 March 2023, and its owner later pleaded guilty in Canada to immigration offences linked to fake acceptance letters (Indian Express, 24 June 2023; CBC News, 29 May 2024). Do not use any agent connected to it. Check any Canadian adviser on the CICC register before you pay.

How do I check if my Canadian college acceptance letter is real?

Find the college on IRCC's designated learning institutions list and compare the DLI number. Ask the college to email the letter to you directly, confirm the offer with its international admissions office using contact details from its own website, and pay tuition only to the college. Since 1 December 2023, colleges must also confirm each letter with IRCC before a study permit is issued.

Can I be deported if my agent used a fake letter?

Yes. Canadian law holds you responsible for everything in your application, even if an agent prepared it, and a fake letter can lead to a misrepresentation finding, removal and a five-year ban. The "innocent mistake" exception is narrow: in 2023 FC 747 the court upheld a finding against a student who honestly believed his letter was real but did too little to check it.

What happened to the students with fake admission letters?

A joint IRCC and CBSA task force reviewed their cases one by one from June 2023. Students found genuine received temporary resident permits of up to three years, with open work and study permits, and IRCC said the misrepresentation finding would not count against their future applications, including for permanent residence. Students found complicit faced removal.

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• Ghost Consultants: The Adviser Whose Name Never Appears
• Five or Ten Year Misrepresentation Ban: What Comes Next
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