Amnesty Law Fraud Arrest Seen as ‘Tip of Iceberg’

Angel Lopez Luna said he was an illegal alien and a 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.

According to 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, as 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.

Has Past Conviction

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

Although allegations of forgery of immigration documents are long-standing, U.S. authorities said this was the first arrest nationwide of a suspect accused of offering phony documents to prospective amnesty applicants seeking to skirt requirements of the new immigration law. The case, officials said, demonstrates how the new statute has added a new--and potentially lucrative--outlet for 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 regional office in Los Angeles.

As the agency begins accepting amnesty applications on May 5, U.S. officials and immigrants 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’ continuing 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,” said James Turnage, INS district director in San Diego.

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 law will have to prove that they performed at least 90 days of farm work in the United States during the one-year period that ended last May 1.

Apart from the Givens case, investigators in California and elsewhere report rumors of amnesty “packages”--including forged rent receipts and other documents--circulating in the undocumented alien community and on sale for prices of 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 their fear of apprehension, deportation and separation from their families. Just as they turn to document forgers, some are also seeking out unscrupulous attorneys, notaries public, consultants and others who promise immediate results for amnesty applications--even though officials point out that there are no quick fixes.

‘They Get Taken In’

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

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

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, as examiners will interview all amnesty applicants and all accounts will be subject to some form of verification. In particular, officials said, specially trained INS examiners at regional processing centers will review applications to seek patterns of fraudulent documents--such as unusual numbers of rent receipts from certain addresses, or suspiciously similar combinations of documents.

A Major Exception

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

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 forged document vendors. Under the law, employers are required to check various documents--such as Social Security cards, passports, immigration papers and driver licenses--to verify the legal status of newly hired employees.

Increasingly, officials predicted, illegal aliens will turn to document 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.

“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.”

Depending on quality, prices for certain forged documents range from a few dollars to more than $1,000.

‘Anything You Want’

“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.

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.

But while certain forged documents have long circulated among the illegal alien community, experts said, 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 from before 1982. Authorities said the vendors are likely to remain the same, although they may be operating with an 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. “It’s a very lucrative business.”

Officials said the vendors 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. Officials said unwitting aliens are often duped into believing that they are purchasing genuine documents.

Forgery Examples

“I would imagine that 99% of the time, they (vendors) claim to have an inside man in the INS,” an 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 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 last year in U.S. District Court on charges of conspiracy and impersonating INS employees. Authorities said 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 up to $2,000 each.

Time-Consuming Process

The documents themselves are often manufactured in large quantities by skilled printers who supply the smaller vendors. As in drug cases, officials said, 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.”

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 and more than 20,000 copies of various INS documents, including more than 1,000 residency permits, or green cards. Last October, two men pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in San Diego to immigration fraud charges stemming from the raid.

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

Agent Contacts Givens

On March 10, court papers show, an undercover INS agent using the name Angel Lopez Luna arrived at Givens’ office in Chula Vista, 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.

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

Three days later, Givens was arrested and was subsequently indicted on three counts of conspiring to make false statements to the INS.

“The potential for rampant abuse is there,” said U.S. Atty. Peter Nunez, 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, 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,” Iredale said, “is that the government manipulated somebody’s misguided compassion for others. . . . The whole case is designed solely to generate publicity for the purpose of deterring (others) at the start of the amnesty period.”