Federal immigration official from Rancho Cucamonga and wife charged with accepting thousands in bribes


10:00 PM PDT on Wednesday, July 9, 2008

By IMRAN GHORI
The Press-Enterprise

A senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney and his wife were charged with bribery Wednesday and accused of accepting thousands of dollars from undocumented immigrants seeking falsified residency papers.

Constantine Peter Kallas, 38, and his wife, Maria Gabriela Kallas, 39, both of Rancho Cucamonga, were arrested June 26 at the San Manuel Indian Bingo and Casino near Highland where they accepted a $20,000 bribe from an undercover government informant who had asked for documentation to stay in the United States, according to a court affidavit.

The couple were indicted by a federal grand jury in U.S. District Court in Riverside on charges of bribery and aiding and abetting, said Raymond Aghaian, an assistant U.S. attorney. They will return to court Monday for preliminary hearings. Bail was set at $500,000 for Constantine Kallas and $200,000 for Maria Kallas.

The charges carry penalties of up to 15 years in prison, Aghaian said.

The Kallases and their attorneys could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Constantine Kallas is accused of using his position as an assistant chief counsel at Immigration and Customs Enforcement to provide undocumented immigrants with papers allowing them to work legally in the United States. Kallas has been employed with the agency since June 1998 but has been on medical leave since January 2007.

The 73-page court affidavit by Lawrence Owen, a senior special agent with the Department of Homeland Security, lays out the investigation that led to the couple's arrest.

Since 2000, the couple deposited $950,000 in multiple bank accounts, not including Kallas' government salary, the document states. The investigation found that the couple provided about 45 illegal immigrants and two legal permanent residents help in obtaining immigration documents, charging as much as $20,000, the affidavit states.

The couple used two shell companies to file falsified Department of Labor forms and immigration petitions, according to the affidavit. Employers can sponsor immigrants to work permanently in the U.S. by requesting such work certificates.

The petitions claimed that the applicants were hired for high-level positions such as human resource managers, engineers or analysts -- skills that none of the applicants were trained for, the affidavit states.

One of the companies listed East Stockton, Ill., as its address and claimed to employ 100 people. Maria Kallas was described as president of that company while the other company named her mother, A. Fisco, of Rancho Cucamonga, who is under investigation and has not been charged, as its head.

A man who says he worked for the Kallases as a recruiter and is now a government witness told investigators he acted as a middleman for the couple, seeking out undocumented immigrants as clients and delivering fees to them, the affidavit states.

Constantine Kallas came under investigation after one of his clients contacted the Los Angeles office where he worked in January 2007, claiming that she paid him large sums of money but he failed to deliver.

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