Man ordered to prison for selling fake documents to undocumented immigrants

By Melinda Rogers

The Salt Lake Tribune

Published Jan 3, 2011 05:12PM
Updated 4 minutes ago Updated Jan 3, 2011 08:44PM


Martin Contreras-Parada says he is a humanitarian who wanted to help undocumented immigrants get the same chance to work in the U.S. that he had been afforded when arriving legally from El Salvador years ago.

The U.S. District Attorney’s Office says Contreras-Parada is a criminal who manufactured more than 1,000 fake immigrant visas, permits, green cards, border crossing cards and other documents in a business venture where he profited from undocumented immigrants’ desperation to find papers allowing them to work after crossing the border illegally.

The two theories collided in federal court on Monday, where Contreras-Parada was sentenced to serve 41 months in a federal prison after pleading guilty in October to felony fraud with identification documents and selling firearms to a felon. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in January 2010.

Contreras-Parada’s case landed in court after he became one of the first arrests made by the Utah Attorney General’s Office SECURE Strike Force, established in June 2009 to target crime by undocumented immigrants. The strike force — financed by a two-year, $1.2-million grant from federal stimulus funds — includes a fraudulent documents identification unit.

Authorities found 36 hologram laminates for making fake alien registration receipt cards, 183 blank Social Security cards, 13 fake complete Social Security cards and 61 partial alien registration receipt cards. They also found cutting tools, fingerprint pads, glue, lamination papers and photographs when they served a search warrant on Contreras-Parada’s West Valley City home in August 2009.

The strike force found evidence that he had manufactured and was prepared to create more than 1,000 fake documents, said Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Taylor.

Contreras-Parada, 46, told U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell that he only sold the documents as a way to help undocumented immigrants, some of whom were living in overcrowded apartments in Salt Lake County with no way to make a living.

Contreras-Parada also admitted to selling a Glock 21 .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol to an immigrant who feared a person he hired to sneak him into the country illegally might cause him harm.

“There are people who live here that live in a little apartment and can’t get ahead. I didn’t make any riches in the sale. I sold them to people who needed them to work,â€