Two employees of global immigration firm Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy's Costa Rica office­—a father and son—stole what may be nearly half a million dollars over the course of four years by forging receipts for fee payments that the firm made on behalf of hundreds of clients seeking residency visas in Costa Rica.

Criminal and government administrative investigations are still underway in Costa Rica, a year and a half after the firm discovered the scheme and fired the father, a messenger and his son, an office worker. The government immigration agency has reassigned two of its own employees who should have noticed the shortfall that the fraud was creating.

Because the immigration agency didn't notice the shortfall, none of the firm's immigration cases were affected so the firm didn't initially detect the fraud, said Jose Andres Monge Calderon, Fragomen's associate general counsel for Latin America, who is based in Costa Rica. Once the firm understood what had happened, it alerted the immigration agency of the fraud and repaid the missing fees to ensure cases weren't affected.