96 Indicted in Marriage Visa Scam, Student Visa Fraudster Sentenced
by R. Cort Kirkwood
TheNewAmerican.com
Thursday, 16 May 2019
The half-million-strong horde of illegal aliens who have crossed the border since October are the worst, but not the only, problem for federal immigration gumshoes.
Another is visa fraud. This week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the arrest of nearly 100 marriage fraudsters, a scam by which foreigners become legal residents with a fake marriage. As well, a student-visa fraudster in Pennsylvania skated with a very light probationary sentence for the scam he set up.
Upshot of the story? Illegally entering the country needn’t entail a risky trip across the desert with smugglers or rafting across the raging currents of the Rio Grande. A fake marriage or fake college acceptance will do nicely,
Just Say I Do
ICE’s Homeland Security Investigation division in Houston has arrested 50 of 96 people who are charged in connection with a major marriage scam based in Houston, the agency announced.
A federal grand jury indicted the eight dozen on April 30, but the indictment is still sealed because of the 46 still at large, ICE reported.
“These arrests mark the culmination of a comprehensive yearlong multi-agency investigation into one of the largest alleged marriage fraud conspiracies ever documented in the Houston area,” said Special Agent in Charge Mark Dawson, HSI Houston.
The schemers, prosecutors allege, created sham marriages “to illegally obtain admission and immigrant status for aliens in the United States.”
The mastermind of the operation, the indictment alleges, is Ashley Yen Nguyen, aka Ashley Duyen, 53, who “headed the Southwest Houston-based organization and had associates operating throughout Texas and the Republic of Vietnam.”
The indictment says the marriages “were shams because the spouses did not live together and did not intend to do so, contrary to the official documents and statements they submitted to [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services],” ICE reported. “The spouses only met briefly, usually immediately before they obtained their marriage license, or not at all.”
The scheme also involved hefty payments to the “beneficiary” spouses, ICE reported, who “entered into an agreement with Duyen in which they paid about $50,000 to $70,000 to obtain full U.S. permanent resident status.” Prosecutors allege the agreements were “prorated” so that Duyen would pay even more as the immigration status of the fake spouse improved from admission into the country, to conditional U.S. permanent resident status, and then, finally, to full U.S. permanent resident status.
The “beneficiary spouses,” of course, needed U.S. citizens to go along. Thus, Duyen and other fraudsters recruited citizens who acted as petitioners in the fake marriages and received some of the money the immigrant spouses paid. “Several individuals who were recruited as petitioners soon afterwards became recruiters themselves,” ICE reported, while others, prosecutors allege, “were in charge of receiving the proceeds from the beneficiary spouses and disbursing the payments to the petitioners.”
The Rest…HERE
