Sacramento immigration fraud figure talks on eve of sentencing today

By Stephen Magagnini
smagagnini@sacbee.com
Published: Friday, Sep. 24, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 1A
Last Modified: Friday, Sep. 24, 2010 - 8:10 am

A 330-pound ex-prizefighter sporting ruffled shirts and a well-groomed beard and moustache, Iosif Caza is the public face of Sacramento's 20,000-member Romanian community.

Caza heads the Romanian American Chamber of Commerce and the Romanian Cultural Center and recently hosted a Romanian American festival at Cesar Chavez Park.

But he's more famous in Romania, where the leading newspaper called him "The Biggest Human Trafficker in the U.S.," Caza told The Bee.

Today, Caza is due to trade in his tailored threads for an orange jailhouse jumpsuit – federal prosecutors expect him to be sentenced to nine years for his key role in one of the most brazen asylum fraud scams in U.S. history.

Caza was the chief interpreter and rainmaker for the Sekhon & Sekhon law firm, which boasted a 95 percent success rate in getting clients asylum based on a well-founded fear of persecution in their home countries.

At least 700 of the firm's clients, most of them Romanians, face possible deportation because after being coached by the firm's lawyers and interpreters, they told phony stories of rape and torture to immigration judges and asylum officers. They still are in limbo – the Department of Homeland Security continues to review their cases.

In June 2009, Caza and his partners in the firm were convicted on multiple counts of asylum fraud. Also due to be sentenced today are the firm's founders, brothers Jagprit Singh Sekhon and Jagdip Singh Sekhon and attorney Manjit Kaur Rai. Each faces up to 10 years in prison.

Between 2000 and 2004, the defendants filed hundreds of claims for Romanians, Indians, Nepalis and Fijians. They made more than $1 million charging clients for bogus addresses, medical reports, notarized declarations and tales of rapes and beatings that never happened, court records show.

"Caza, a well known member of the Romanian community in the Sacramento area," used his contacts to attract hundreds of Romanian clients who got asylum through false pretenses, federal prosecutors said in the pre-sentencing report.

Prosecutors called the firm a "fraud factory. ... Caza made the gears run, supplying interpreting services, translating services and fraudulent documents to supply the machine."

Prosecutors alleged Caza boasted about his "money-back guarantee" and "appeared to take great pride in his accomplishments and reputation in the community."

In an exclusive interview with The Bee, Caza claimed the asylum-seekers he helped through the process deserved to escape from communist Romania where thousands were spied on and persecuted for their religious beliefs.

"Romanians learned to live in fear – they are really still in shock," Caza said at the Romanian Cultural Center, surrounded by Romanian looms, embroideries, maps and a poster of Vlad the Impaler, who resisted the invading Turks in the 15th century and inspired the fictional Count Dracula.

Caza likened himself to escaped slave Harriet Tubman, who liberated hundreds of slaves through the the underground railroad, and to Oskar Schindler, the charming businessman and gambler who outwitted the Nazis to save about 1,200 Jews.

"Schindler broke German law, but he helped save people," Caza said, and Tubman broke the laws of the Confederacy to smuggle slaves north.

"As a child, I read these stories, and thought I was going to be rewarded by the American government," said Caza, 44. "I did this for my people. I know what it's like to be a refugee, to drink water with cows ... to be tortured and abused. I have been through hell – I am not a fake. I had all the motivation in the world to help people when they asked me to."

Caza was born in the village of Parta near Timisoara, Romania. His father was a factory supervisor and his mother a devout Pentecostal who practiced her faith illegally in atheist Romania.

Caza said he was mocked and slapped in school for his family's beliefs. That stopped after he grew to 6-foot-2 and became an amateur boxer.

Romanian authorities tried to get him to inform on Pentecostals, Caza said, but he refused and told his wife not to join the Communist Party.

"I was very vocal about telling people to leave the country when the Secret Service arrested me," he said.

He said he was thrown in a windowless cell for 42 days, tortured, and told that his wife would be raped to force him to inform on his church. "I told them up front you'd better kill me," said Caza, whose family hid in the cornfields.

Caza said he later was convicted of conspiracy and sent to prison for four months.

After his release, he said he fled to Yugoslavia, then nearly froze to death walking across the Italian Alps. He applied for asylum to the United States, was approved and came to Sacramento in 1989.

He said he worked construction, translated for Romanians in hospitals, on court cases and workers' comp disputes and helped hundreds apply for green cards.

Caza became a U.S. citizen in 1995. He and his wife, Simina, raised six kids.

In 2005, his wife died – suicide, police said. Caza believes she was murdered by his enemies. He has asked the court for leniency to care for his 15-year-old daughter.

On the eve of his sentencing, he insists that the people he helped get asylum truly were abused.

"What if I send back a person who was persecuted to be killed in Romania – I don't want blood on my hands," he said. "It is better to let out 10 criminals than convict one innocent man."

But federal prosecutors said "the conspiracy operated as a business with a clear profit motive. ... The callousness with which they replicated stories of rape and torture betrayed a disrespect for the real suffering endured" by vulnerable immigrants who were truly abused because of their religion or ethnicity.

"A fraud of the size of this case cannot help but to make the asylum process more difficult for those who have suffered persecution," the government said. "They are the true victims of the defendant's crimes."

"I did this for my people. I know what it's like to be a refugee."

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