http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1- ... 686486.php

April 13, 2006

Ninth sailor named in illegal marriage scheme

By William H. McMichael
Times staff writer


The Justice Department now says that nine, not eight, current or former Florida-based sailors were charged Tuesday with marrying illegal immigrants — or conspiring to do so — in order to profit through cash payments or housing allowance fraud.

Six of the nine were arrested and appeared in federal court in Jacksonville on Tuesday, and a seventh turned himself in to U.S. Marshals on Thursday, said Steve Cole, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Jacksonville.


Five of those seven sailors are assigned to the Mayport, Fla.-based aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy. The sole ex-sailor was last stationed on the Mayport frigate Simpson. Air Traffic Control Airman Gregory Allen Mitchell, 22, of Houston, who turned himself in Thursday, is assigned to the Naval Air Technical Training Center, Pensacola, according to Navy personnel records.

Arrested Tuesday and appearing before Magistrate Judge Howard T. Snyder were:

• Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Launching and Recovery Equipment) 3rd Class Joe E. Conn II, 23, of Baton Rouge, La.

• Aviation Boatswain’s Mate (Aircraft Handling) 3rd Class Ryan T. Dodge, 22, of Coal City, Ill.

• Three ABH airmen: Isaac G. Bell, 23, of Susanville, Calif.; Horatioalexander King, 24, of Moreno Valley, Calif.; and Isidro Cruz III, 22, of Pensacola, Fla., all assigned to the JFK.

• Former Boatswain’s Mate Seaman Apprentice Timothy Richard McNomee, 21, of Stevensville, Md.

Also arrested Tuesday was Monika Agnieszka Kubaczka, 27, a Polish citizen officials say McNomee fraudulently married.

The two sailors not yet apprehended are assigned to the frigate Simpson, which Navy officials say is deployed. They were identified in an affidavit and by the Navy as Gas Turbine System Technician (Electrical) Fireman Dariusz Stanley Baranski, 25, of Berlin, Md., and Culinary Specialist 3rd Class Anthony Niele Palacios, 21, of Safford, Ore. Their duty status is unknown.

Each of the first six sailors and Kubaczka were released Tuesday on $10,000 unsecured bond, court officials said. Mitchell’s status was still being decided Thursday afternoon.

In addition to Kubaczka, seven other women — six Polish citizens and one Romanian citizen — also face federal marriage fraud charges but remain at large. The seven women live in “a variety of cities throughout the U.S.,” Cole said.

All nine sailors were married to foreign nationals for the purpose of fraudulently obtaining a housing allowance, according to the affidavit; Cole said he couldn’t comment on why the woman married to Baranski was not charged.

Bell, Conn, Cruz, King, McNomee and Mitchell all are charged with conspiracy to enter into fraudulent marriages and conspiracy to present false claims against the United States. Dodge faces only the fraudulent marriage conspiracy charge.

If convicted, the sailors and women face a maximum of five years in prison on each count, Cole said. In addition, the women would likely face deportation hearings once their cases were settled, he said.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service began an investigation on the Kennedy into basic allowance for housing fraud in September when, during training exercises off the Florida coast, a chief petty officer told an agent assigned to the ship that Dodge had fraudulently married a Polish woman and was going to apply for BAH.

BAH is a tax-free allowance meant to offset the cost of living off base in non-government housing, and it is based on the cost of living in a given area and other factors. Young sailors, E-4 and below, generally are not allowed to draw BAH unless they are married or have documented dependents.

The agent summoned Dodge and, according to the affidavit, Dodge told the agent that a fellow JFK sailor set up a meeting for him with another JFK sailor, Bell, who told Dodge he could arrange a fraudulent marriage. Dodge met the woman on Sept. 6 and married her the next day in Kingsland, Ga. The government says Dodge then took her to Mayport Naval Station, where she obtained a military dependent ID card. Dodge told the agent he had not seen the woman since.

NCIS investigators learned that a total of nine current or former sailors had fraudulently married European women so they could start illegally drawing BAH. A parallel investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, found that none of the women lived with the sailors.

That investigation also revealed that the fraudulent BAH claims were based in part on the sailors’ claims that their spouses were living in high cost-of-living areas. Cole declined to identify any of those areas, citing the ongoing investigation.

The current or former sailors received more than $35,000 in fraudulent BAH payments, according to the federal press release. One sailor, Mitchell, received more than $1,836 per month, along with $200 a month in separation pay. The Navy ended all the payments Nov. 30.

The case mirrors a November case out of Manhattan in which seven sailors from the Norfolk, Va.-based aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower and three other people were charged with conspiring to enter into sham marriages for cash payments to enable the improper entry of an alien into the U.S. In August 2004, six sailors assigned to the San Diego-based dock landing ship Germantown were charged with using sham marriages or false Mexican marriage certificates to obtain more than $122,000 worth of housing allowance payments. An NCIS spokesman, however, said there’s no evidence of widespread BAH fraud within the Navy.

“We don’t have any indication that it is a massive, systemic problem,” said Ed Buice, an NCIS spokesman. “But whatever cases there are certainly are worth investigating and prosecuting.”