In a reported decision published this month, the Upper Tribunal set out how a group of EU Settlement Scheme appellants used forged bank statements, council tax bills, residence cards and death certificates to win, or try to win, immigration appeals decided on paper. One of the five appeals succeeded at first instance on documents the Home Office had not been sent in time. The tribunal warned that generative AI is making such fakes easier to produce and harder to detect.
In a decision promulgated on 20 June 2025, a First-tier Tribunal judge allowed the immigration appeal of Zahid Mehmood, a Pakistani national who said he was married to a Bulgarian woman with pre-settled status in the United Kingdom. The judge decided the case on the papers. He accepted a Pakistani marriage certificate, and a Pakistani death certificate for a child Mr Mehmood said had died the previous December, as documents that appeared “prima facie, reliable.” He gave little weight to a Home Office report that money-transfer receipts in the file were false.
The Home Office had not seen most of the evidence the judge relied on. Mr Mehmood’s 61-page bundle was served on the department on 27 May 2025, after the case had already been sent to the judge for decision. When the Home Office later checked, it reported that the bank statement was false, that the money transfers belonged to another customer, and that an email supposedly sent to its Liverpool interview team did not match the email the team had actually received. Mr Mehmood did not attend either Upper Tribunal hearing. The appeal was ultimately dismissed.
His case is one of five decided together in Hoxha & Others (Tanveer Ahmed; fraudulent applications; procedure) [2026] UKUT 00378 (IAC). The panel was Judge Feeney, President of the First-tier Tribunal’s Immigration and Asylum Chamber, with Upper Tribunal Judges Blum and Mandalia. The appeals were heard at Field House in London on 8 January and 6 March 2026. The decision was issued on 21 August 2026 and published on the tribunal’s website on 5 October 2026. Legal trade press, including Legal Futures and Free Movement, has reported the AI warning. The decision itself contains more detail about how the scheme worked, and about how close the system came to accepting it.
A pattern, not a one-off
The tribunal says the five appeals “are among ten that were listed for hearing because they concerned similar issues,” and that all ten “display certain characteristics indicative of abuse of the immigration appeal system.” The other five were decided in separate decisions. All five in this decision involved applications under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) by people claiming to be the spouse or partner of an EEA national living in Britain.
The tribunal describes a sequence that recurred across the cohort (paragraph 9):
- The applicant files minimal evidence. Key documents such as a marriage certificate or proof of living together are left out.
- The Home Office asks for more evidence or invites the couple to a marriage interview. The request goes unanswered, or the interview does not happen.
- The application is refused for lack of evidence. The applicant appeals and asks for the appeal to be decided “on the papers” rather than at an oral hearing.
- Days before the decision, the applicant files a bundle with the tribunal containing the missing “critical evidence”: marriage certificates, residence cards, bank statements, money-transfer receipts, sometimes a foetal scan or a child’s death certificate. The bundle is often not served on the Home Office, or is served late.
- “The appeal will often be allowed because the FtT judge is unaware that the evidence provided to the FtT has not been served on the SSHD.”
- Once the Home Office obtains permission to appeal and the Upper Tribunal orders the appellant or sponsor to attend, applications to adjourn or withdraw follow, and in most cases nobody turns up.
The tribunal also noted that grounds of appeal and witness statements often had “the appearance of being generated by a large language model,” with “overly formal use of language, rigid structuring making heavy use of headings and bullet points, reliance on hallucinations (invented case law) or incorrect citations.” And it found that unconnected appellants were sometimes using the same email address. Auron Hoxha, an Albanian national, and Zahid Mehmood, a Pakistani national, both gave the same Gmail address as their own personal account. The tribunal said that when “entirely unrelated individuals” use the same address, it “is suggestive of fraud.”
What the forgeries looked like
The most useful part of the decision for the public is the detail of what the Home Office found once it was given the documents and time to check them. The tribunal summarised it in one sentence: “we have seen authentic looking bank statements, money transfer documents, residence cards, birth and death certificates, and email correspondence all of which, on examination and without explanation, have been found not to be genuine.”
The individual findings are specific:
- Hoxha. Barclays confirmed that the account number, sort code and transactions on a “joint” statement matched a real account, but that the named individuals did not hold an account with the bank. A separate Home Office check found that the Bulgarian sponsor had also been listed by another EUSS applicant, who produced a marriage certificate showing a marriage to her on the same date in Sofia. The tribunal found the certificate relied on by Mr Hoxha “contains information that is wholly untrue.”
- Zahid Mehmood. A TSB statement was false. Taptap Send transfer receipts were false because “the details belonged to another customer.” The email said to have been sent to the Liverpool EUSS interview team did not match the email the inbox had received that day. The tribunal found the Home Office had proved, on the balance of probabilities, “that false documents were knowingly used to fraudulently support the application.”
- Atif Mehmood. Peterborough City Council tax bills for five years between 2018 and 2024, in the couple’s joint names, were false: the council said the individuals “do not have an account” and the account number and dates “do not match” its records. A Birmingham council tax bill was false. Santander said the account on a “joint” statement was real but the names were not. Barclays said the sponsor had no account. Foreign Office checks in Islamabad found no record of the claimed Pakistani marriage. Mr Mehmood had described himself as “single” on visit-visa applications in 2022 and 2023, both made after the date of the claimed marriage.
- Nagina Kousar and her son. The Cyprus Police document laboratory found two Cypriot residence cards to be false. A Pakistani death certificate for the man named as her husband in her 2019 passport was found to be forged. HSBC statements and money transfers were false. The tribunal also found a hospital letter, filed the day before a hearing to explain the sponsor’s absence, not to be reliable.
One feature appears repeatedly. Several of the documents were built on real data: a genuine account number with altered names, or transfers copied from another customer’s real transactions. In the tribunal’s words, “the documents are in the proper format, but it is the content that has been manipulated.” They “would, at first glance, appear to an innocent observer to be in what might be considered to be in a standard format with no obvious markers to indicate they are false.”
The procedural gap the forgers used
The decision is careful to say the problem is not simply that forgeries exist. It is that the appeal process allowed forged documents to reach a judge before the Home Office had seen them. Three features of the system, all described in the judgment, made that possible.
First, the online system does not lock. Most First-tier appeals now run through MyHMCTS. “In all online appeals, evidence may be uploaded at any stage up to the hearing. The online system does not ‘lock’ once the directions timetable has expired.” Material uploaded after the deadline appears in the same Documents tab as material filed on time.
Second, the Home Office does not watch for late uploads. The tribunal states that the Home Secretary “does not continually monitor appeals for newly uploaded material and will often have completed the review before the document was uploaded.” In an “offline” appeal, the tribunal “does not file or serve evidence on behalf of the parties.” So a judge can be looking at a bundle that one party has never seen.
Third, paper determinations remove the cross-examination that would test the evidence. An appellant who chooses a paper decision pays a “lesser fee.” No hearing date is fixed, so the other side has no set moment at which to object. The tribunal told judges that it “is legitimate” to ask “why an appellant would choose to have the appeal determined on the papers where the credibility of the appellant and/or sponsor is in issue.”
This is the institutional failure in the case. It is not dishonesty by officials. It is a process that left verification to chance. Under long-established law, the Home Office is “not generally required to verify documents,” because of “logistical and cost constraints.” That rule is reasonable only if the Home Office actually receives the documents before a decision is made. In Zahid Mehmood’s appeal, it did not.
The concession that nearly closed the Hoxha case
The Hoxha file shows that the safeguards nearly failed a second time, at the Home Office’s own end.
Mr Hoxha lost his First-tier appeal on the papers in January 2025, and was granted permission to appeal. On 23 May 2025, according to the chronology the Upper Tribunal annexed to its decision, a Home Office presenting officer emailed the tribunal to say the department “does not oppose the appeal” and agreed that it should be determined again so “the evidence can be reconsidered correctly.” That evidence was the same Barclays material later shown to be false. Between May and July 2025 the tribunal received a series of emails from the shared Gmail address asking for “final disposal” and for the case to go back to the First-tier Tribunal to be decided again on the papers.
The Upper Tribunal refused to deal with the matter without a hearing. At the hearing in September 2025, which Mr Hoxha did not attend, the Home Office was allowed to withdraw its concession. The verification report on the Barclays statements is dated 24 October 2025, five months after the department had told the tribunal it would not oppose the appeal. On the record set out in the judgment, the check came after the concession.
The tribunal did not criticise the Home Office for this. It said that it was “far from clear” that the documents had ever been served on the department before the First-tier decision. But the sequence shows where the system’s weak point lies. The Home Office conceded the case before it had checked the documents, not after.
Withdrawals, absent witnesses and an adviser paid in advance
The tribunal also described what happened once the Upper Tribunal ordered appellants and sponsors to attend in person with original documents. Adjournment requests cited a holiday booking, poor internet in Pakistan, and medical emergencies. Requests to withdraw Atif Mehmood’s appeal arrived three times. The first, in December 2025, asked to withdraw “with immediate effect”; eleven days later an email in his name said he had never authorised it. Solicitors filed a formal notice of withdrawal on the morning of the final hearing. The tribunal refused consent each time. It said it had “significant concerns about the conduct of Mr Mehmood and the manner in which the resources of the FtT and Upper Tribunal have been abused to further an ulterior motive.” The refusals meant these appeals ended in findings on the evidence rather than simply being dropped. In a separate appeal in the group, Zahid Mehmood had lodged a fresh EUSS application while his appeal was still pending.
An adviser regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority appeared for Atif Mehmood at one hearing. He told the tribunal he had been instructed by phone and WhatsApp video, had not asked who the overseas “agent” assisting the appellant was, and had insisted that his fee be paid in advance. The tribunal said it was “incumbent on him to undertake the appropriate due diligence checks,” and that “the only concern appears to have been that his fee be paid in advance.” It referred to an earlier reported decision, R (Ahmed and Others) v Entry Clearance Officer [2026] UKUT 00273 (IAC). That case holds that where there are “red flags” bearing “the hallmarks of fraud,” a representative cannot keep acting without first making enquiries.
The AI warning, and what it does and does not say
The headline line from the decision is the tribunal’s statement that “the ability of AI models to generate material, including documents, is capable of posing an existential threat to the integrity of the immigration appeal system, and requires particular vigilance.” It defined a new category of “fake documents”: documents “artificially generated or materially altered using either conventional or advanced digital tools (sometimes, but not only, involving AI) so that it appears authentic but is not.” It noted that the tools “are becoming readily available and are rapidly improving in sophistication and can be used by non-technical users.”
Readers should be precise about what that means. The tribunal did not find that any particular document in these five appeals was produced by AI. Its findings are that the documents were false, based on checks with banks, councils, foreign authorities and Home Office records. The AI material is a forward-looking warning, together with an observation that some grounds of appeal looked machine-written. The tribunal also stated that suspected AI use “is not by itself an indication of fraud,” and that it did not intend “to deprecate the proper use of AI tools” by people representing themselves.
Its legal answer was to restate an old rule rather than invent a new one. Tanveer Ahmed, a 2002 starred decision, holds that the person relying on a document must show it can be relied on, assessed “in the round” with all the other evidence. The Home Office needs to prove forgery only if it expressly alleges it. The 2002 tribunal observed that some documents are “‘genuine’ to the extent that they emanate from a proper source, in the proper form, on the proper paper, with the proper seals, but the information they contain is wholly or partially untrue.” The 2026 panel said that observation and the others in that paragraph “remain as true now as they did in 2002,” and confirmed that the principle applies to every kind of immigration appeal, not only asylum cases, and to “any document” filed at any stage, including in bail hearings and adjournment requests.
The practical guidance to judges is direct:
- Check when each document was uploaded, and do not assume that the Home Office has seen anything not mentioned in its review.
- Late evidence requires a formal application for permission. The judge may refuse it, give it reduced weight, or adjourn. If the judge cannot be sure it was served, relying on it “may be procedurally unfair.”
- Be “cautious about granting adjournments,” because “delay is not in the interests of justice.”
- Cases that turn on credibility should “ordinarily be heard orally, and ideally in person.” In remote hearings, the judge should confirm the witness’s identity, that no one else is in the room, and that the witness “is not using a computer or other device to assist in answering questions.”
- Medical letters offered to explain non-attendance can themselves be fabricated. A “pro forma letter, produced without any physical examination” may carry little weight.
The counter-arguments
The decision also contains points that cut against the simplest reading of the case, and those points are part of the record.
First, the tribunal protected the right to a fair hearing in both directions. In the Kousar appeal, the First-tier judge had dismissed the case after suspecting that the paper-hearing request was designed to avoid scrutiny. The Upper Tribunal held that this was procedurally unfair, because the judge drew the inference without telling Ms Kousar about the concern or considering an oral hearing. The Home Office agreed. The appeal was dismissed again only after the department produced verification reports and the case was re-heard properly.
Second, the tribunal warned against reading too much into weak signals. An email address that does not match a person’s name “is an inherently weak indicator of fraud,” and is relevant only alongside “other unexplained anomalies.” Home Office verification and enrichment reports are “simply items of evidence” and “are not determinative,” and an appellant must be given the report and a fair chance to answer it.
Third, the evidence base is narrow. The decision covers five appeals from one cohort of ten. It gives no figure for how many of the many thousands of EUSS appeals involve forged evidence, and none should be inferred from it. For scale, the Home Office reports that 7,012 EUSS family permits were granted in the year ending June 2026, 22 percent fewer than the year before. Some of the appellants in these cases were legally represented for part of the process, and the tribunal noted that fraud “can still occur where the appellant is legally represented.”
What is established, what is not
Established by the decision: In five appeals, the Upper Tribunal found that bank statements, council tax bills, money-transfer receipts, residence cards, a marriage certificate, a death certificate and an email to the Home Office were false or unreliable, and dismissed every appeal. In one appeal, the First-tier Tribunal had allowed the case on evidence the Home Office had not been served with in time. In another, the Home Office had told the tribunal it did not oppose the appeal before it had verified the documents. In one case the tribunal found the documents were “knowingly used to fraudulently support the application.” Two unconnected appellants used the same personal email address.
Not established: That any specific document was created with AI. Who produced the forgeries, and whether the overseas “agent” mentioned in one case was behind more than one application. How many other EUSS appeals have been decided on unserved or forged evidence. The decision does not say whether any matter has been referred to police or prosecutors, or whether the adviser’s conduct has been referred to his regulator.
Why it matters
RSN has followed the courts’ growing frustration with how the Home Office handles evidence, from the EXR judgment on unread caseworking records to the indemnity costs imposed on the Ministry of Defence for missed court deadlines. Hoxha is the other side of the same problem. Here the department’s caseworkers, working with banks, councils, the Foreign Office and Cypriot police, did catch the forgeries. They caught them late, after one appeal had already been allowed and after another had been conceded. The decision shows a system that relies on the integrity of what is filed, with verification happening afterwards if at all. It also shows that the lack of cross-checking is the weakness that organised applicants exploit.
AI-generated material in court is not new to RSN readers either. In July, the Crown Prosecution Service admitted placing AI-fabricated authorities before the High Court. The risk now runs in both directions: invented law from the professionals and invented evidence from litigants. Immigration document fraud is not a new problem either. In 2015 and 2016, RSN carried Michael Cutler’s warnings that immigration and document fraud are a standing security vulnerability, and his reporting on marriage-fraud charges linked to the San Bernardino attacker’s family. Those pieces concerned the American system. The weakness they described is the same one this decision identifies: a benefit granted on a document no one has checked.
What accountability would look like
- Lock the file. HM Courts & Tribunals Service should change MyHMCTS so that uploads after the directions deadline are flagged to the judge and to the Home Office, or are blocked until permission is granted. The tribunal’s guidance depends on judges checking upload dates by hand.
- Verify before conceding. The Home Office should adopt a rule that no EUSS appeal is conceded while the documents relied on remain unverified.
- Follow the shared addresses. Two unconnected appellants used one email address, and a sponsor appeared in two marriage certificates bearing the same date. The Home Office should say whether it has searched its records for other applications linked to those details, and whether any have been referred for criminal investigation.
- Refer the adviser question. The decision records an adviser’s failure to carry out due diligence. Whether the Immigration Advice Authority has been told should be on the public record.
- Publish the scale. The Home Office and the tribunal should publish how many EUSS appeals since 2021 were allowed on papers-only determinations, and how many decisions were later set aside because evidence had not been served.
The tribunal has told its judges to be vigilant. That is necessary, but it should not be the only safeguard. A system that accepts evidence it has not checked will keep being exploited, whether the forgeries are made with a scanner or with AI.
Sources: Hoxha & Others (Tanveer Ahmed; fraudulent applications; procedure) [2026] UKUT 00378 (IAC), including Annex 1 (error of law decision, 18 February 2026); Tanveer Ahmed (Documents unreliable and forged) Pakistan [2002] UKIAT 00439; Home Office, Immigration system statistics, year ending June 2026: Family; Legal Futures (9 October 2026); Free Movement (22 October 2026). All quotations from the decision are taken from the published judgment. Paragraph references are to the main decision unless stated otherwise.
Featured image: Field House, Breams Buildings, London, where the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) heard the Hoxha appeals. Photograph by Smuconlaw, June 2013, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.