Orem man among 8 charged with visa fraud, alien smuggling
Janice Peterson - Posted: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 12:10 am | 1 Comment

Eight people and two companies, including a Utah County man, were charged with conspiracy to commit alien smuggling and visa fraud Tuesday in a federal indictment.

According to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah, Daniel Trigo Villavicencio, 30, of Orem, is named in the indictment, along with seven people involved with Salt Lake City's Alcala Law Firm and Westside Property Management, in Salt Lake County.

The indictment is the result of an 18-month investigation by the U.S. Department of State, ICE, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Department of Homeland Security Citizenship Inspection Services and the U.S. Attorney's Office.

"The charges in this indictment allege that attorneys and others who worked at the law firm, who have a position of trust in our community, circumvented the law to obtain visas for employers and the foreign national workers they were employing in Utah," U.S. Attorney Brett L. Tolman said in the release.

The indictment alleges the conspiracy was developed to assist Utah employers in obtaining visas for their foreign-born workers who were not eligible for the visa. According to the release, more than 5,000 visas were issued, based on more then 700 petitions.

The defendants in the case allegedly encouraged businesses they worked with to file for more of the H-2B visa than they needed in order to swap foreign-national workers from one employer to the next. Although the employers were looking visas for their current workers, the defendants prepared forms and submitted them indicating the employers were looking for new employees who were not in the United States. They also allegedly told foreign-national workers to return to Mexico and not tell the consular office they had just come from the United States, in order to illegally obtain the visa.

Two landscaping companies and a steel company in Utah County were clients of the Alcala Law Firm, as were several Salt Lake County companies, though none were named in the indictment.

Villavicencio worked for the law firm as in-house counsel, according to the indictment. Melodie Rydalch, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Utah, said Villavicencio has yet to be located and arrested. He and the other defendants face a possibility of five years in prison for conspiracy to commit alien smuggling and visa fraud and up to 10 years in prison for encouraging and inducing illegal aliens to come to, enter or remain in the United States.

Posted in Local on Wednesday, July 29, 2009 12:10 am Updated: 1:01 am.



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