22 charged in probe of sham marriages

[peejay 327]

22 charged in probe of sham marriages

Citizenship the goal, authorities allege

By Jerry Markon and Jamie Stockwell

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON - The clerk at the Arlington County courthouse was growing suspicious. People who seemed to barely know one another were getting married. The same people kept showing up to help them get a license.

Alerting the authorities, the clerk set in motion a three-year investigation that resulted yesterday in federal charges against 22 people in what officials called a major marriage fraud scheme. The sham nuptials were intended to speed the route to U.S. citizenship for illegal immigrants, prosecutors said.

In all, almost 1,000 phony marriages might have been performed, mostly in Arlington but also in Alexandria, Fairfax County, Manassas, the District and Maryland, according to the charges. The immigrants, mostly from Western Africa, would pay as much as $6,000 to be introduced to their "spouse," usually on the day of the marriage. They would then be coached on how to lie to immigration inspectors.

"That's a pretty big number of marriages when you're talking about a relatively small geographic area," U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg said as he announced the charges at a news conference in the Arlington courthouse where the scheme began to unravel. "We think this is a very, very big problem."

The case is part of an intensifying federal crackdown, which began after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on marriage and other immigration document frauds. In the past six weeks alone, federal officials have broken up or obtained guilty pleas in at least four marriage fraud rings across the country, including a California scheme dubbed "Operation Newlywed Game" in which 44 people were charged.

In the Northern Virginia case, those charged include nine people accused of arranging the marriages, 10 illegal immigrants who married and three U.S. citizens who married them. Law enforcement officials said the investigation is continuing.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14724111/

Oh-me-oh-my! Maybe we should give them all an amnesty and let them stay. Not!

[Veiled Princess 1]

Oh-me-oh-my! Maybe we should give them all an amnesty and let them stay. Not!

Is this the same case as in the other thread or a different group altogether?

[derekkj 0]

Oh-me-oh-my! Maybe we should give them all an amnesty and let them stay. Not!

Is this the same case as in the other thread or a different group altogether?

Sounds like the same case.

[denny01 0]

seems so easy for them......ya....they got caught....but seems like they would have gotten caught before they even got here. I sit here......with 22 files of chat logs.......amounting to 1000s of pages of chat .....and they are gonna look at me and her way before she gets here.......whats wrong with this picture ?