Last night, we showed you a small portion of Patrick Tillett's startling testimony to the Senate Select Committee. He was explaining how come he ended up with 6 out of the 8 visas stolen from the Immigration Department's Benque Border Station back in late 2012. He told the Senate that he was running a visa services business where he collected money to assist Chinese Nationals to visas approved at the Immigration Department.
Tillett told the Senators that in the December of 2012, he collected $6,000 each for 6 applicants. $2,000 was for the fee that the Government collected for an approved visa. $1,000 was his fee to check and make sure that all the supporting documents were submitted with the visa application. The final $3,000 was paid to this mysterious "Mr. Middleton", described as an immigration agent. On the face of it, this appeared to be a lucrative business. But, in this particular instance, Tillett claims that he got jilted out of $30,000 by "Mr. Middleton", which he then had to refund, those Chinese nationals who didn't get what they paid for. What they got instead were 6 passports with visa stickers that did not have the required security features to pass an inspection from an Immigration Officer, so those "clients" - as Tillett called them - would not be able to come to Belize.
We'll show you the senate's complete skepticism as to why he simple kept it quiet, took a financial hit, and pretended that it didn't happen. But, first, here's the conversation that the Senators had for him trying to understand why he paid this "Mr. Middleton" three times his cut for what he described as simply delivering the applications to the Immigration Department:
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