Thread: Feds: 2 men arranged jobs for illegal workers

Feds: 2 men arranged jobs for illegal workers

By MANUEL VALDES
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

SEATTLE -- Federal prosecutors have accused two Mexican men of arranging employment and obtaining false documents for several illegal immigrants and using fake identification to take out mortgages totaling more than $1 million.

The men - Rogelio Lopez-Tiznado, 39, and Gabriel Perez-Zambrano, 37 - made their initial federal court appearances Thursday, hours after they were arrested and charged. The men remain in custody pending a detention hearing.

Attorneys for the two declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors charged the men with several crimes, including using and possessing false immigration documents, falsely claiming citizenship and misusing Social Security numbers. Their alleged violations date back to 2003.

Prosecutors said both men are in the country illegally and recruited people from their hometowns in Mexico to come to the United States and work for their employer, Ketchikan Drywall Services Inc. of Woodinville, Wash.

Federal prosecutor Don Reno said it was absurd that two illegal immigrants using fraudulent documents were able to take out mortgages without anyone checking the validity of their identifications.

Reno also said managers at Ketchikan Drywall could have checked the immigration status of Lopez-Tiznado and Perez-Zambrano.

"An 800 call to Social Security would have shown that these Social Security numbers that they had given to Ketchikan were fraudulent.

That would have prevented their illegal employment and presumably would have prevented, between the two of them, obtaining about $1.2 million in mortgages," Reno said. "It's a very unfortunate circumstance because we bear the cause of this fraud."

Calls for comment to Ketchikan Drywall were not immediately returned. Reno said he couldn't comment on whether the company is under investigation.

Reno added that about $700,000 worth of the $1.2 million in mortgages taken out by the two men is now in foreclosure. The men, he said, falsely claimed to be U.S. citizens in their mortgage loan applications.

Court documents say Lopez-Tiznado owned houses in Bothell and Everett and used them to rent out rooms to the recruited illegal workers. Perez-Zambrano also rented his house to workers, documents say.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_w ... ments.html

I bet these illegal aliens used an ITIN number for businesses to purchase the mortgages. Banks don't check legal status via E-Verify, 287g Program or ID verification.