Fraudulent Navy Marriages to Foreign Women Exposed
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news//...marriages.html
Prosecutors: Sailors fraudulently married foreign women for money
By Ron Word
ASSOCIATED PRESS
4:35 p.m. April 11, 2006
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Five Navy sailors, a former sailor and a Polish nanny made their initial appearance in federal court Tuesday, charged with a fraudulent marriage scam designed to increase housing pay for the military men and help foreign-born women apply for citizenship.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) agents said they learned that eight sailors based on the USS Kennedy and USS Simpson fraudulently married the women to receive an increase in their basic housing allowance. The seven Polish women and one Romanian woman, who paid a fee from $2,000 to $6,000 fee for the weddings, were then able to petition for U.S. citizenship, Perez said.
An investigation by NCIS and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement found that none of the women lived with the sailors they married.
One sailor in the case is from San Diego and another is from Susanville, Calif.
The seven defendants were released by U.S. Magristrate Howard T. Snyder after each signed a $10,000 unsecured bond.
He scheduled an April 27 preliminary hearing and appointed private attorneys to represent each of the seven.
Two other sailors charged in the case are on deployment with the USS Simpson off the coast of Italy. Seven other women, six of them Polish and one Romanian, were also being sought.
Basic housing allowance is a tax free payment that active duty members of the U.S. military receive to offset their housing costs if they do not live on base. It is based on location, marital status and the number of dependents. By claiming they were married, the sailors received extra money in their paychecks.
One of the sailors, for instance, received $1,836 per month in fraudulent basic housing allowance payments. In total, the eight received $35,000 in fraudulent payments, investigators said.
The Navy terminated the allowance of the eight sailors charged on Nov. 30, 2005.
If convicted, the sailors face up to five years in prison for each count and a $250,000 fine.
The NCIS investigation began last September when a Navy petty officer assigned to the Kennedy was approached by a seaman from the Simpson with the opportunity to receive a basic housing allowance for marrying a Polish woman, officials said.
The seaman who arranged the marriage was to receive $6,000 from the woman and the petty officer was to receive the basic housing allowance, officials said.
Four of the men face charges of conspiracy to enter into a fraudulent marriage and conspiracy to present false claims to the government. They are Isaac Gordon Bell, 22, of Susanville, Calif.; Joe Conn, 23, of Little Rock, Ark.; Isidro Cruz III, 22, of Newark, N.J; and Horatio Alexander King, 34, of San Diego.
Another sailor, Ryan Timothy Dodge, 22, of Joliett, Ill., faces one charge of conspiracy to enter into a fraudulent marriage.
Former sailor, Timothy Richard McNomee, 21, also made his initial appearance on the two charges as did Monika Kubaczka, 27, who works as a nanny in Ponte Vedra Beach. The two were married on March 4, 2005, but never lived together, officials said.
