'Agency' Busted For Arranging 400 Sham Marriages, Pairing Foreigners With Americans For Green Cards

Eleven residents of California were charged for running a racket that paired up hundreds of immigrants with U.S. citizens and orchestrating “sham marriages” to get green cards.

Marcialito “Mars” Biol Benitez, 48, was arrested Thursday for running an “agency” with 10 other co-conspirators and duping immigration officials with fake nuptials, according to the New York Post. Benitez operated the agency out of a brick-and-mortar office in Los Angeles, and the rest of his team was hired as staff members.

The agency specialized in finding U.S. citizens for their foreign national clients and staging an entire fake marriage for the pair. The Americans, willing to pretend like spouses, were paid a fee to participate and also given a stipend to make regular appearances, the Department of Justice said Thursday in a news release.

Once the undocumented client is matched with a U.S. citizen, the agency holds a fake wedding ceremony at different locations like chapels or parks with online officiants and fake props.

The agency would then submit photos of the fake wedding, along with false documents and petitions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. To make the plan foolproof, Benitez and his team would also coach the fake couple on how to handle interviews with immigration officials.

Benitez would charge clients between $20,000 and $30,000 in cash for the entire deal. In case a spouse is no longer willing to play a role in the scam, the agency would help the foreigners get green cards under the Violence Against Women Act by concocting domestic violence allegations, the news release said.

Officials said that at least 400 such “sham marriages” have taken place between 2016 and March this year.

U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Rachael Rollins announced the charges Thursday and said, as quoted by CBS Boston: “These weddings were not love stories. This isn’t the movie ‘The Proposal’ with Sandra Bullock or Ryan Reynolds.”

“Couples who met on one day married very shortly thereafter, sometimes the very next day,” Rollins added.

Out of the 11 suspects, Benitez and eight others were arrested in California on Thursday. All the suspects are aged between 24 to 48.

Joseph R. Bonavolonta, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Boston field office, said in the official news release: “It is the utmost honor and privilege to become an American citizen, and the individuals we arrested today have allegedly made a sham of that process by running a large-scale marriage fraud ‘agency’ that arranged hundreds of fake marriages for foreign nationals, racking up millions of dollars in profits. We believe their alleged scheme broke immigration laws that are in place to protect public safety and created a disadvantage for those seeking to earn their citizenship lawfully.”

“This case should serve as a warning to others that the FBI and our law enforcement partners are united in our efforts to disrupt and dismantle criminal enterprises that seek to circumvent our laws by fraudulent means,” Bonavolonta added.