Thread: Alexandria, VA Businesses Nabbed for Im'gration Fraud

http://www.timescommunity.com/site/tab5 ... 6096&rfi=6

Local businesses nabbed for immigration fraud
By Dominic Bonaiuto
03/15/2005

An Alexandria woman pleaded guilty this week to conspiring with two Fairfax County businessmen to obtain hundreds of fraudulent visas for foreign workers looking to move to or remain in the United States.

Alice Jia, 42, was employed by George Tsui, 44, of Centreville, whose U.S. Eagle Inc. specialized in pairing Chinese aliens with American employers.

Last week, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia indicted Jia, her boss, and five others on charges of immigration fraud and money laundering.

U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty said it was the latest in a series of massive cases where criminals have abused the country's immigration and visa systems.

A 44-page indictment alleges Tsui and Naran Ivanchukov, 67, of McLean, owner of Global Recruitment and Immigration Services, charged tens of thousands of dollars for fraudulent visas.

The operation generated millions of dollars during a four-year period. Authorities said Ivanchukov and his daughter, Michelle Pappadakis, 21, of Sterling, who was vice president of Global Recruitment, kept most of their payments in a safe, rather than in a bank, to avoid having to claim the money as taxable income.

Rex Wingerter, 51, of Hyattsville, Md., was Ivanchukov's in-house attorney at Global Recruitment and allegedly helped conceal the fraud.

Hundreds of fraudulent documents allegedly were filed with state and national labor departments claiming foreign workers would be employed by Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey companies for custodial or construction work, but the jobs did not exist.

To receive labor certificates from those agencies, Tsui, Ivanchukov and the others had to falsely certify that local employers had tried and failed to fill the job vacancies with American workers.

Investigators found that one of the companies in question was actually laying off, not hiring, while these applications were being filed, and in another instance job openings were deliberately posted out of sight to discourage legal residents from applying.

Robert Mahood, 31, of Pennsylvania, was a manager at East Coast Fabricators, a window frame manufacturer based in Winchester that was allegedly going to hire many of these alien workers.

Bemba Balsirov, 48, of New Jersey, is Ivanchukov's nephew and was listed as a construction manager for East Coast Fabricators in fraudulent job notices. The listings gave a New Jersey telephone number for Balsirov even though the jobs were allegedly here in Loudoun County.

Paul Mederos, of Alexandria, was a manager of Cleaners of America, another company that allegedly planned to hire workers. He pleaded guilty to related charges in July 2004 and admitted to being paid $211,000 by Ivanchukov to sign fraudulent labor certificates.

This is great news.