Feds: Asylum seekers coached to lie

Feds: Asylum seekers coached to lie

By BEN FINLEY AND MATT COUGHLIN
Bucks County Courier Times

NORTHAMPTON - They were Baptists with broken noses, Jews who'd been routinely abused and Jehovah's Witnesses whose homes had been firebombed.

Or so said nearly 400 Eastern Europeans who allegedly lied about being persecuted in their homelands to try to gain asylum and, eventually, residency in the United States.

At the center of the scheme was David Lynn, a 33-year-old Northampton man who was born in Israel and who himself has no legal status in the U.S., according to federal authorities.

During the mid-2000s, Lynn allegedly made $3 million off immigrants who paid him fees of $8,000 per person and up to $12,000 per family for help concocting fake stories of abuse and oppression.

But the overwhelming majority of the immigrants were denied asylum anyway because their stories weren't convincing enough or the immigrants lacked the proper documents, acting U.S. Attorney Laurie Magid said.

“This fraud was about nothing more than money,â€

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Lynn and his alleged cohorts are to turn themselves in to authorities later this week, officials said.

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Why weren't these individuals picked up by the feds? Since when can criminals be trusted to do the right thing? 8O