U.S. Indicts 2 in Plot to Bribe INS Agent : Immigration: A Santa Ana man and his partner paid nearly $200,000 to a woman posing as an official to prepare phony work permits, prosecutor says.

A federal grand jury indicted a Santa Ana man and his partner Tuesday on charges that they paid nearly $200,000 in an attempt to bribe an Immigration and Naturalization official for phony work permits for illegal immigrants.

“This case represents the largest bribe of any Justice Department official that has been prosecuted to date by the United States attorney’s office,” acting U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers said.

The nine-count indictment charges Jose Luis Terrones, 30, of Santa Ana and Mohammad Aleem, 31, of Los Angeles with paying a woman posing as an INS official to prepare fraudulent work permits for about 100 illegal immigrants, most from Pakistan, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol L. Gillam, who is prosecuting the case.

Terrones’ and Aleem’s clients probably would not have qualified for work permits under the federal amnesty program, because most are suspected to be illegal immigrants who could not show they have lived in the United States since 1982, as the law requires, said Joe Flanders, an INS spokesman in Laguna Niguel.

Terrones and Aleem met with a Santa Ana INS official and a government agent posing as an INS Legalization Office employee several times from Dec. 17, 1991, to March 25, 1992, when the two were arrested, the indictment states.

During meetings outside the INS office in Santa Ana or at a nearby fast-food restaurant, Terrones agreed to pay $2,000 for each phony permit processed, the indictment states.

Gillam said such documents “are worth a lot of money. . . . There is a huge class of people who are so desperate.”

While hailing Tuesday’s bribery indictment as the largest to date, officials with the U.S. attorney’s office and the INS said the phony documentation industry is not new but is growing. Phony documentation “is a multimillion-dollar industry,” Flanders said. “In terms of phony documentation, the market is very large. The market is there.”

Flanders cited a two-month investigation by Los Angeles INS officials, which resulted in the arrest of 83 illegal immigrants in January. Special agents lured the men and women to the Los Angeles headquarters of the INS, ostensibly to be interviewed for permanent residency. Instead, the agents were waiting to arrest those who held fraudulent documents printed by counterfeiters that would have helped them gain permanent status.

“With the Immigration Control Act and all, obviously you are going to have a corresponding surge of people who want to illegally take advantage of it,” Flanders said. “It did open the door to some illegal activity.

“One of our top enforcement efforts has been in this area for the last four or five years,” Flanders said.

Obtaining a work permit “is a key step for most aliens,” Gillam said. “Most breathe a sigh of relief because (the work permit) allows them to work” on a temporary basis.

Most work permits allow the holder to work for about one year, at which time the person may file for an extension, authorities said.

The bribery case against Terrones and Aleem began when Terrones approached Evangelina Belmonte, a supervisory legalization official with the INS office in Santa Ana, whom he met through his work as an immigration consultant out of his Santa Ana home, according to the indictment.

“Aleem had the Pakistanis, and Terrones had the connections,” Gillam said.

The government has the names of the illegal immigrants who paid Terrones and Aleem for phony work permits, she said, and could decide to use them as witnesses against the suspects.

If convicted on all counts, the two face up to 125 years of imprisonment, plus fines amounting to $2.25 million, the indictment states.

Aleem was being held without bail in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Center. Terrones was free on $15,000 bond. He could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Both men are scheduled to be arraigned Monday in U.S District Court in Los Angeles, Gillam said.