In late February 2024, the Cantonal Court in Zenica sentenced Ajša Ramić from Visoko to one year and four months in prison for fraud. The court found that in 2021, Ramić falsely represented herself as a lawyer and issued counterfeit public documents to a client, charging him 4,100 BAM for these services.
According to the verdict, Ramić portrayed herself as a lawyer to the client when he visited her Administrative Bureau Forrtuna, which specialized in administrative and service work. He sought her assistance in suspending alimony enforcement proceedings, which Ramić assured him she would handle. She then forged a public document falsely stating that the proceedings had been suspended, charging him 4,100 BAM for the service.
The court ordered Ramić to reimburse the defrauded client.
The Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the allegations raised in the CIN story “The American Dream Turning Into A Nightmare”, published in September 2022.
Ramić and Merjem Mirsada Veladžić from Florida collected approximately $140,000 from numerous BiH citizens for American visas. The business partners claimed they cooperated with the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH ) and applied on their behalf for an accelerated visa process. In return, they asked the clients to give them their passports and pay around five thousand US dollars to arrange an interview appointment at the Embassy.
CIN reporters discovered that Veladžić and Ramić neither cooperated nor communicated with Embassy officials. They were providing clients with falsified documents and would return their passports only months later at their insistence. Members of 14 families with whom the journalists spoke say that cooperation with these women brought them disappointment and shame.
After CIN exposed Ramić’s role in visa fraud schemes, readers came forward to testify how she had previously deceived them with false intermediation services.
Also, in mid-2023, the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) arrested Ramić and Naida Mehanović from Sarajevo, at the request of the Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office, as part of the police operation “Tin” on suspicion of human trafficking.
Ramić was reported to the police and prosecutor by clients and associates at least three times during the past two years, mostly for fraud. The Sarajevo Canton Prosecutor’s Office twice decided not to initiate an investigation while the Federation Police Administration (FUP) compromised the investigation upon the third report by unlawfully obtaining evidence.
