Thread: FL-Business owner gets prison time in immigration fraud

Business owner gets prison time in immigration fraud


By ELAINE SILVESTRINI

Published: March 2, 2010

TAMPA - Barbara Branks said she was only trying to help immigrants.

The owner of La Gringa Professional Immigration Services said she fabricated documents and asylum petitions because her clients needed her.

"As God is my witness, at no time did I intentionally seek to defraud this government," Branks, 58, tearfully told a federal judge today. "My focus was on the client. … It was never for financial gain. It was just my passion to help."

Branks was sentenced to four years and nine months in federal prison for conspiring to make false statements in documents required by immigration authorities.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eduardo Toro-Font told U.S. District Judge Virginia M. Hernandez Covington that Branks acted out of greed, and that her crime injured the integrity of the immigration system, harming those who follow the rules.

Toro-Font said Branks filed 274 fraudulent asylum petitions.

As a result, immigration officials and attorneys will be forced to spend time reviewing every document from clients of Branks' Clearwater business, he said. Even those with legitimate asylum claims may be forced to return to their home countries to face persecution because Branks helped them take fraudulent shortcuts.

To qualify for asylum, an immigrant must prove he has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution in his home country based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. He must prove that either his home country was the persecutor or is unable to control the persecutor.

Among the documents Branks conspired to prepare were medical letters, political party affiliation letters and proof of employment letters.

"Every single file that came from Barbara Branks' business is now tainted," Toro-Font told the judge. "This was no charity operation. The defendant made her living out of this business. (She was) doing it for the money."

In addition to the prison sentence, Covington ordered Branks to forfeit $816,000, the estimated profit from the fraud. Branks also must serve two years of probation upon her release.

"As the daughter of somebody who became an American citizen, I know how much citizenship means," Covington said. "It's a precious and wonderful gift. … Somebody who jumps to the head of the line, that penalizes those who paid their dues, who followed the rules."

Defense attorney Bryant Camareno said Branks' clients also bear some responsibility, and that the crimes weren't all her doing.

"Each person who cut the line knew they were cutting the line," he said. "My parents were immigrants, too, and they followed the rules."

Branks' friends and family gave statements on her behalf, weeping as they pled for lenience, praising her for her compassion.

Branks said she started fabricating documents after hearing stories from Latin American immigrants about what happened in their homelands.

"I cried with their sadness," she said. "I wanted to be their hero."

She said the paper trail required by immigration authorities is, for the most part, nonexistent in the Third World. The fact that the documents were faked "didn't mean the persecution was not happening," she said. "Morally, I felt that I was saving their lives."

"You're not helping people," Covington said, "when you join them in lying to the government."


http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/mar/02 ... -breaking/

"I cried with their sadness," she said. "I wanted to be their hero."

Yea right, you cried all the way to the bank!