Fraud Prevention Unit

The Embassy's consular section contains a dedicated Fraud Prevention Unit.

The U.S Embassy in Laos does not use agencies or brokers to process visas. Applicants wishing to travel to the U.S must apply for a visa directly at the Embassy, and must be interviewed only by an American official.

Should anyone wish to come forward with information regarding visa-related fraud in Non-immigrant, Immigrant, Diversity visa, or Citizenship applications, the Fraud Unit can be contacted via the following email address:

Email: ConsLao@state.gov

Those willing to provide information should rest assured that their information will be received with great interest and treated with great discretion. The fraud unit appreciates all efforts to combat visa and immigration fraud.

FRAUD ALERT: EMAIL SCAMS

US issues alert on Green Card fraud – The Sunday Nation 20 February 2011
The Fraud Unit has noticed a recent rise in email-based scams claiming to notify the recipient that he or she has won the diversity visa lottery.  The US government NEVER notifies winners of the diversity lottery by email.   Any email that is ever sent by the US government will come from an email that ends in “.gov”, NOT “.com” or “.org”. For more information please visit fraud warning.

If you won the diversity visa lottery in the 2011 cycle, you will receive a paper notification in the mail.  If you win the diversity lottery in the 2012 cycle, or any year afterward, you will not receive any notification that you have won.  Instead, you will have to log in to the same website where you applied to the lottery, to see if you have won.  As such, please guard your log-in and password carefully.