Fake Documents an Industry : Alien Amnesty Law Is Boon for Scam Artists

Angel Lopez Luna said he was an illegal alien and hotel worker seeking help applying for amnesty. William Givens was a Chula Vista immigration consultant who said he could help. Never mind that Lopez acknowledged that he had entered the United States after Jan. 1, 1982, the cutoff date for applicants seeking legalization, or amnesty, under the new immigration law.

Last month, according to court papers and authorities, Givens told Lopez that he could arrange rental receipts that would bolster Lopez’s amnesty application. The price: $3,150. Lopez should hurry, Givens allegedly told him, because there was a great demand for the documents.

Unfortunately for Givens, Lopez was not the illegal alien he purported to be. Instead, he was an undercover federal agent.

On March 13, federal authorities arrested Givens, an immigration consultant with a past federal conviction for mail fraud, and charged him with conspiring to make false statements to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. A federal grand jury charged that Givens, 45, provided three illegal aliens with forged rent receipts backdated to before 1982. Givens, who faces five years in jail and a $250,000 fine on each of the three counts, has pleaded innocent.

New Outlet for Fraud

Although allegations of document forgery are nothing new in the immigration business, this case was novel: U.S. authorities in San Diego say it was the first arrest nationwide of a suspect accused of offering phony documents to prospective amnesty applicants seeking to skirt requirements of the new federal immigration law. The case, officials say, demonstrates how the new statute has added a new--and potentially lucrative--outlet to the counterfeit documents business.

“Unfortunately, I think this (the Givens case) is the tip of an iceberg,” said John Belluardo, a spokesman for the INS’s regional office in Los Angeles.

As the INS begins accepting amnesty applications on May 5, U.S. officials and immigrant rights groups say they anticipate the emergence of more and more entrepreneurs offering forged rent receipts, payroll records, utility bills and other documents that help to demonstrate applicants’ residency in the United States. Phony documents “have been a part of our business for a long time, and the legalization program will simply add a new demand, a new wrinkle for vendors,” noted James Turnage, INS district director in San Diego.

“We expect them (fraudulent documents), and we’re ready for them,” said Harold Ezell, the INS’s regional commissioner in Los Angeles.

To qualify for legalization, most applicants will have to produce documents, such as rent receipts, to demonstrate that they have lived continuously in the United States since Jan. 1, 1982. In addition, illegal aliens seeking to qualify under special agricultural provisions of the new law will have to prove that they performed at least 90 days of farm work in the United States during the year that ended last May 1.

Apart from the Givens case in San Diego, investigators in California and elsewhere report rumors of amnesty “packages”--including forged rent receipts and other documents--circulating in the undocumented community and on sale for prices ranging up to several thousand dollars.

“We anticipate that these kinds of packages will probably begin to surface,” said Mario Ortiz, assistant regional commissioner for the INS in Dallas.

Inevitably, the packages are aimed at poor illegal aliens who are desperate to shed their shadowy underground existence and constant fear of apprehension, deportation and separation from their families. Just as they turn to document forgers, they are also seeking out unscrupulous attorneys, notaries public, consultants and others who promise immediate results for amnesty applications--even though officials say there are no quick fixes. Although many undocumented immigrants stand to benefit from the legalization program, many are likely to be victimized once again.

“These people are desperate and gullible, and they get taken in by these smooth-talking operators,” said Roberto Martinez, an activist who provides advice to illegal aliens in San Diego on behalf of the American Friends Service Committee. “By no stretch of the imagination are they (the illegals) criminals. They’re just victims.”

Authorities see it otherwise. The INS and federal prosecutors have issued stern warnings, strongly advising aliens to avoid fraud or face felony charges and possible hefty fines and lengthy jail terms. Indeed, three of the people indicted along with Givens were illegal aliens who are accused of having purchased backdated rent receipts from Givens’ immigration consulting concern.

“My advice to them (illegal aliens) is ‘Don’t do it. Don’t use fraud,’ ” said Ezell. “ ‘You’re just going to end up in a lot more trouble.’ ”

More than likely, officials say, the documents purchased at great cost by illegal aliens will not help secure amnesty--and could well end up getting applicants deported and/or thrown in jail. While the INS does not have the manpower to verify each document submitted by amnesty applicants, authorities assert that it is unlikely that fake receipts will pass, because INS examiners will interview all amnesty applicants and all accounts will be subject to some form of verification. In particular, officials say, specially trained INS examiners at regional processing centers will review applications, seeking patterns of fraudulent documents--such as unusual numbers of rent receipts from certain addresses or suspiciously similar combinations of documents.

“Once they (examiners) start seeing these similar packages, it’s going to turn on a red light . . . and it (the fraud) is going to become very apparent,” said Duke Austin, an INS spokesman in Washington.

Moreover, while officials have repeatedly vowed not to turn over information gleaned from amnesty applicants to prosecutors and investigators, authorities have also cautioned that there will be one major exception: The applications of amnesty candidates who have resorted to fraud will be used for possible prosecution.

“We’re going to come down hard on fraud,” Ezell said.

Employer Sanctions

Apart from amnesty-related fraud, experts suspect that the other major component of the immigration bill--legal sanctions against employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens--will also increase business for vendors of forged documents. Under the new law, employers are required to check various documents--such as Social Security cards, passports, immigration papers and driver’s licenses--to verify the legal status of newly hired employees.

Increasingly, officials say, illegal aliens will turn to forgers to provide the needed documents, which, even if crude, can probably fool most laymen. Employers are not required to verify the authenticity of the documents but need only note the documents in their records.

“We call this a 30-footer: You can spot it as a fake from 30 feet away,” said Allen R. Wuhrman, the INS’s assistant district director for investigations in San Diego, as he showed a visitor one of a collection of forged immigration documents seized from suspects. “But,” Wuhrman conceded, “this may be good enough to fool the average employer.”

Indeed, soon after the passage of the immigration bill, the statute’s importance was downplayed by a group of Mexican citizens who had gathered at a hole in the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, waiting for an opportunity to cross into the United States. The men told a reporter they would have no problem purchasing phony documents in Los Angeles, which most said was their ultimate destination.

“It’s easy to buy them,” said Ricardo Camacho, a 24-year-old butcher from Ensenada, who was waiting with the other men. “Once you have them, you can show them to your boss, and there’s no problem.”

Camacho and the other men spoke of a thriving black market of forged Social Security cards, driver’s licenses, U.S. residency permits--known as green cards or micas-- and other documents. Well before the passage of the new immigration law, such documents were available on the streets of Los Angeles and other cities, towns and rural areas with large populations of illegal aliens. In addition, Mexican border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, are considered hot spots for the sale of phony U.S. immigration documents.

“If you’ve got $10, you can buy anything you want,” said one INS investigator who has worked undercover in Los Angeles and requested anonymity.

Depending on quality, prices for certain forged documents may climb to more than $1,000.

The INS investigator noted that there is even a demand for forged Mexican birth certificates: If apprehended by U.S. authorities, many Central Americans prefer to claim Mexican citizenship, thus avoiding a deportation trip all the way back to their homelands. Being sent to Mexico, by contrast, facilitates a quick return to the United States.

“We deport them to Tijuana, and they go 30 feet, hop a fence and they’re back,” the investigator noted.

Vendors Run Gamut

But experts say that, while certain forged documents have long circulated among the illegal alien community, the amnesty provisions of the new law have created a demand for a whole new family of fake paper work, such as rent receipts and utility payment stubs dated before 1982. However, authorities say that the vendors are likely to remain the same, though they may be operating with a somewhat expanded clientele.

“When you have people whose main income comes from the production of counterfeit immigration documents, what’s to preclude those same entrepreneurs from adding a new kind of document?” asked Ernest Gustafson, district director for INS in Los Angeles. “I think it’s a natural. . . . It’s a very lucrative business.”

Who are the vendors? Officials say they run the gamut from storefront operators who sell documents on the side to large-scale entrepreneurs who may use a legitimate front, such as a candy store or income-tax advice office, to cover their illicit earnings. High-powered sales pitches are the norm. Vendors frequently boast of their official contacts; some have been known to wear uniforms and badges. Indeed, officials say, unwitting aliens are often duped into believing that they’re purchasing genuine documents.

“I would imagine that 99% of the time, they (vendors) claim to have an inside man in the INS,” an agency investigator said. “Quite often, aliens come in to us with these documents that are obviously false and the first thing we say is, ‘I hope you didn’t pay more than 35 bucks for it.’ ”

Some recent cases illustrate the range of forged immigration document operations:

- In San Diego, those convicted of selling false documents in recent years include a taco shop owner and a hotel personnel director.

- In Los Angeles, a Tijuana man and his daughter were convicted in U.S. District Court last year on charges of conspiracy and impersonating INS employees. Authorities say the two were part of a ring that also operated in Tijuana and may have defrauded as many as 3,000 people, providing victims with forged letters and forms, purportedly from the INS, that led them to believe that their U.S. residency applications were being expedited.

- In Texas, a federal grand jury in Brownsville this year indicted seven people--including a Texas National Guard sergeant--and charged them with being part of a major ring that manufactured high-quality facsimiles of birth certificates and other documents and sold them to illegal aliens in packages costing as much as $2,000 each. The National Guard sergeant was accused of supplying military identification cards that gave the holders access to military facilities.

The documents themselves are often manufactured in large volume by skilled printers who supply the smaller vendors, operating in a manner akin to the way that legitimate wholesalers provide merchandise to retail outlets. Officials say that, as in drug cases, gathering evidence against high-level manufacturers can be a time-consuming process.

“Usually you have to find the little guys out selling and try to work up to the suppliers,” said Wuhrman, the INS official in San Diego. “It can take a long time.”

Chula Vista Case

However, in a significant case broken in 1985, INS investigators in San Diego County seized a printing press, lithographic plate, other printing machinery and thousands of counterfeit documents--with a reported street value of more than $10 million--at a storage facility in Chula Vista.

Among the items discovered were 10,000 counterfeit Social Security cards, more than 20,000 copies of various INS documents, including more than 1,000 residency permits, or green cards, numerous California birth certificates and U.S. and Mexican immigration stamps. In October, two men pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in San Diego to immigration fraud charges stemming from the raid.

In this case, the printing plant was discovered inadvertently during a drug investigation by local police, not by tracing the documents’ sources from street-level vendors.

“Through a stroke of luck, we started at the top,” said Wuhrman, who added that the large-scale seizures led to a temporary shortage of fraudulent documents throughout Southern California.

In the most recent case here, authorities became suspicious of Walter Givens when several aliens whom he had assisted provided the INS with suspicious rental receipts. Givens, who is free on $75,000 bond, served four years in prison for a 1983 mail fraud conviction.

On March 10, according to court papers, an undercover INS agent using the name Angel Lopez Luna arrived at Givens’ Chula Vista office, ostensibly in search of immigration assistance. The agent told Givens that he had arrived in the United States in 1982--after the Jan. 1, 1982, amnesty cutoff date--and Givens initially informed him that he would not qualify for amnesty.

However, when the undercover agent returned later, Givens told him that he could “arrange everything” needed to qualify for amnesty, according to court papers. It would cost the applicant $3,150.

“Givens said that the (agent) should call to say when he wanted to pay since there was great demand for the (rental) receipts,” according to a government affidavit.

Three days later, Givens was arrested. A federal grand jury in San Diego indicted him and four of his co-workers last month on three counts of conspiring to make false statements to the INS. On three occasions, authorities charge, Givens provided backdated rent receipts to aliens making applications before the INS.

“The potential for rampant abuse is there,” U.S. Atty. Peter K. Nunez said when asked about the new immigration law and the problem of forged documents. “Hopefully by taking a stern stance up front, we can prevent it from becoming an epidemic.”

But Givens’ lawyer, Eugene Iredale, sees it differently. Iredale describes his client as a well-meaning individual who was entrapped by a government agent and now is being punished as an example.

“What happened is that the government manipulated somebody’s misguided compassion for others,” Iredale said. “ . . . The whole case is designed solely to generate publicity for the purpose of deterring (others) at the start of the amnesty period.”