Thread: 4 arrested in immigration fraud scheme (updated)

I.C.E.News Release

September 11, 2012
Miami, FL

4 arrested in immigration fraud scheme

MIAMI – Four individuals were arrested in Naples, Fla., Aug. 31, for conspiring to commit immigration fraud. These arrests resulted from an investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of Professional Responsibility, ICE's Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Collier County Sheriff's Office. The indictment alleges the defendants conspired to sell fraudulent Cuban birth certificates and to assist in the preparation of fraudulent applications for immigration benefits.

Nelson Daniel Silvestri Soutto, 53, Laura Maria Ponce Santos, 59, and Amelia Osorio, 60, all of Naples, Fla., Fidel Morejon Vega, 40, of Kissimmee, Fla., were indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami for conspiring to commit immigration fraud. Vega was also charged with three counts of false impersonation of an officer of the United States.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

ICE is a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities. For more information, visit www.ICE.gov. To report suspicious activity, call 1-866-347-2423 or complete our tip form.

• U.S. Dept of Homeland Security

4 arrested in immigration fraud scheme

Scammers to be sentenced for selling fake Cuban birth certificates to people seeking U.S. residency

1.17.13
By Alfonso Chardy
The Miami Herald

U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga is expected Friday to sentence members of a network who sold false Cuban birth certificates to undocumented immigrants so they could pretend to be Cubans and obtain green cards.

Thanks to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, Cubans who arrive in the United States without a visa can remain in the country and apply for residence after a year and one day. This immigration benefit is available only to people who can prove they are Cuban citizens.

The case in Miami federal court exposed the first public details of what has become an increasingly common practice in South Florida.

Miami immigration attorney Wilfredo Allen said he has represented more than a half-dozen clients in the past few years who have been accused by immigration authorities of carrying residence cards obtained illegally with false Cuban documents.

Allen said immigration authorities have developed sophisticated methods to discover the fraud related to the Cuban Adjustment Act, and can verify, if they have any suspicion, whether the applicant is presenting an authentic Cuban document.

The network, consisting of four members, three from Naples and one from Kissimmee, was dismantled in September, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested and charged them with conspiring to commit immigration fraud.

All initially pleaded not guilty, but changed their minds and their pleas. Since then, Judge Altonaga has sentenced one of them to six months in prison and two years of parole, including nine months of house arrest.

Two more are scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.

The accused are Nelson Daniel Silvestri Soutto, Laura María Ponce Santos and Amelia Osorio of Naples, and Fidel Morejón Vega of Kissimmee.

People familiar with the case said Morejón and Osorio are Cubans and Silvestri and Ponce are Uruguayans. Their clients were of various nationalities, including Argentineans, Colombians, Costa Ricans, Mexicans, Peruvians, Salvadorans and Venezuelans.

None of the defense attorneys or immigration authorities would comment Wednesday.

Documents available in court pointed to Morejón as the presumptive leader of the group.

He was charged with selling Cuban birth certificate at prices ranging from $10,000 to $15,000 each while posing as a high-ranking immigration official when meeting with potential clients. One was an undercover agent who posed as a Mexican.

For 3 ½ years, beginning in 2009, at least 50 undocumented immigrants bought false birth certificates, according to court documents. Some of them became residents, including some of the accused who then acted as recruiters for Morejón, the court documents state.

The scam netted more than half a million dollars, according to a memorandum in the case.

Other court documents indicate that Morejón may have obtained the birth certificates in Cuba. They don’t specify whether Morejón obtained the certificates at a Cuban government office or received them from a corrupt official who printed them himself.

One of the network’s clients, identified in court records only as J.R., cooperated with investigators and introduced Morejón to an undercover agent who wanted to buy a Cuban birth certificate.

The court documents include transcripts of some of the conversations between Morejón, J.R. and the undercover agent, identified as Rolando.

In one of the transcripts, Morejón said that for the fraud to be successful, Rolando and J.R. would be taken to the Florida Keys and left there as newly arrived rafters. Morejón told them that when the immigration officials picked them up they had to say they were Cubans and know the details of their birth certificates by heart.

In the conversation taped surreptitiously, Morejón advised them on how to respond to questions, but J.R. stumbled when he tried to remember where he was born in Cuba.

“So, if they ask you, ‘Where were you born?’ at that moment you have the birth certificate. ‘Where were you born?’ asks Morejón in the transcription.

“I was born in Havana . . . no, in Guinness, Guinness, Cuba,” responds J.R, referring to the city of Güines, 25 miles southeast of Havana.

Morejón also advised J.R. not to talk too much while in the custody of immigration authorities before being paroled, apparently to avoid detection of their non-Cuban accents or saying things that a Cuban could not say or know.

“You’re going to be at a place where there would be seven or eight people,” Morejón tells J.R., according to the transcript. “ ‘Hey, how did you get here?’ ‘In a raft.’ ‘Are you Cuban?’ ‘Yes.’ That’s all. That’s all. You don’t have to say more or make much conversation.”

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Scammers to be sentenced for selling fake Cuban birth certificates to people seeking U.S. residency - Miami-Dade - MiamiHerald.com

By VICTORIA MACCHI
Posted January 20, 2013 at 8 a.m.
marconews.com

NAPLES — The U.S. was paradise for Uruguayan immigrant Laura Ponce Santos, who made her home in East Naples.

Paradise, though, came with a catch.

A federal judge recently ruled that Ponce Santos will spend the next six months in federal prison, and her husband, a year.

The pair pleaded guilty to participating with two other people in an immigration fraud ring that provided fake documents to at least 16 unauthorized immigrants in the Naples and Miami areas and brought in nearly a half-million dollars in revenue.

The immigrants' fake papers said they were from Cuba, but they weren't. It was a way to gain expedited approval to stay in the U.S., compared with the longer approval process required for immigrants from other countries.

"They were on their own and doing it for quite some time," said Sherry Cumming, special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

* * * *

When they arrived from South America about a decade ago, Ponce Santos and her husband didn't set out for a life of crime.

They worked hard in cleaning and construction and built up savings, according to court documents.

When the recession hit, work dried up.

Around that time, they reached out to a man who said he could make them legal residents. After years of being undocumented, court papers show they agreed to pay him thousands of dollars to make them appear legal, though they were here illegally.

They just needed to pretend they were Cuban, he told them, because under a special law for those born in the island nation, green cards come faster.

In 2009, they became legal permanent residents.

If you knew what it was for a person like me to be able to remain here, you would be able to better understand how my entry into this crime began."

Laura Ponce Santos

"I was able to get documents that permitted me to remain in this country," Ponce Santos wrote in a letter to the court in November 2012, three months after her arrest on fraud charges. "That promise was difficult to turn down. If you knew what it was for a person like me to be able to remain here, you would be able to better understand how my entry into this crime began."

The problems started when other undocumented immigrants started asking: How did they make it happen?

There was someone who could help them, the couple said.

* * * * *

For a while, Ponce Santos and her husband, Nelson Silvestri Soutto, just referred potential clients to Morejon Vega.

Then he started paying them commission, according to Ponce Santos' lawyer, Alberto Sarasua.

The East Naples couple, now in their 50s, got deeper into the scheme.

Under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1996, Cuba-born immigrants can qualify for a green card after just a year in the U.S. — an expedited process compared to some countries, where the wait can last years, sometimes decades.

The fraud ring provided fake Cuban birth certificates to expedite the process.

With Morejon Vega posing as an immigration agent on the take, Ponce Santos, Silvestri Soutto and former Collier County School District custodian Amelia Osorio would find clients and coach them on how to be Cuban, court records show. It was a flawed plan, Ponce Santos admitted. She and her husband were far from Cuban.

"With my Uruguayan accent, I do not know how I swallowed that lie, or others believed it," she wrote in the letter to the court.

Osorio, who lived in East Naples but was born and raised in Cuba, got into the scheme through fake documents of a different kind, records show.

She requested from Morejon Vega a fraudulent presidential pardon for her son, who had been convicted of federal drug charges.

Unable to pay the $10,500 price tag, after handing about one-third to Morejon Vega, he told Osorio she could pay off the rest by helping him recruit clients, according to court documents.

Naples-area residents go to prison as part of ring faking nationality as Cuban » Marco Eagle