Latino Leader Indicted in Document Fraud

Jose Velez, president of a leading national Latino civil rights organization, and three Taiwanese nationals were indicted Tuesday on federal charges that they conspired to create and supply false documents so thousands of illegal immigrants could remain in the United States.

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas, said the immigrants were charged fees as high as $45,000 each for fraudulent documents provided by the alleged Taiwanese conspirators--Bill Tzeng, Simon Chang and Al Feng. Velez carried out his part of the conspiracy through his Las Vegas immigration consulting firm, Velez & Sons, Inc., according to the indictment.

The organization Velez heads, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization, was not accused of any wrongdoing.

The indictment is part of a continuing investigation in Las Vegas by a Legalization Fraud Task Force made up of 10 Immigration and Naturalization Service agents, assisted by Internal Revenue Service agents. The indictment was released by the Justice Department here and in Las Vegas.

In the investigation related to Velez, six defendants, including Velez’s son, Peter Velez, have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with investigators, the Justice Department said.

Ted Marshall, an attorney for Jose Velez, was quoted by the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Sunday defending Velez’s conduct.

“He was clearly operating an agency with staff but he gave clear and implicit instructions that nobody was to be involved in any illegalities,” Marshall said. “If some of the mice were playing when the cat was away, that’s one thing, but he insists that whatever happened did not involve him.”

The alleged conspiracy, which ran from March, 1988, to about January, 1991, sought to misuse the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the department said. The act authorized immigrants who had been living in the United States illegally before Jan. 1, 1982, to apply for amnesty as a step toward becoming legal residents.

Immigrants who did seasonal agricultural work for specified periods also could file another type of legalization application.

The grand jury charged that Velez, Feng, Tzeng and Chang conspired to provide false documents and oral statements to the INS for immigrants fraudulently seeking amnesty. At the height of the alleged conspiracy, Velez reportedly received receipts, paid primarily in cash, totaling as much as $50,000 a day for his work.

The indictment described how unnamed co-conspirators, called “group leaders” in the indictment, recruited busloads of unqualified immigrants to file false amnesty applications in Las Vegas.

Most group leaders charged applicants fees ranging from $250 to $3,500, although Feng, Tzeng and Chang allegedly charged some applicants as much as $45,000 apiece. The group leaders shared their fees with Velez, according to the indictment.

It said that Velez and his fellow plotters obtained blank envelopes bearing Mexican postage and backdated Mexican postmarks, which when addressed to unqualified immigrants served as fictitious evidence of longtime U.S. residency.

In Sacramento, Arnoldo Torres, who served as the organization’s national political adviser during the 1989-1990 election that brought Velez to the helm of the group, said he warned the members that Velez was under investigation and could embarrass the organization.

Times correspondent Geoffrey Mohan contributed to this story from Los Angeles.