New Efforts Underway to Combat Immigration Fraud

Miguel Cerna, a factory worker and dishwasher from Anaheim, saved for years to pay an immigration consultant $7,200 to get legal work permits for himself, his wife and their daughter.

But the consultant strung him along, kept the money and never delivered the permits.

Cerna, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who came to the United States 10 years ago, reported the consultant to the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs. But he remains nearly broke and in danger of being deported.

“I’ve got nothing,” he said angrily. “Not a shred of paper.”

Such tales of fraud are all too common in Southern California, the nation’s hub both for illegal immigration and for bogus consultants who prey on unsuspecting newcomers. Now, however, authorities are launching several new efforts to prosecute phony immigration consultants and to aid victims like Cerna.

On Jan. 1, a new state law doubled the bond requirements for consultants from $25,000 to $50,000. A task force of city and county prosecutors plans to launch a countywide sweep in the next two months to identify and prosecute consultants who have not submitted the higher bond or have posted no bond at all.

On Jan. 14, the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles assembled a team of private lawyers to offer free legal advice to immigrants and victims of unethical consultants.

Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles), who recently hosted a public hearing on fraud perpetrated against immigrants, said she plans to introduce legislation this month to increase from $10,000 to $100,000 the civil penalties that victims can collect from immigration consultants and other professionals who violate provisions of the state’s Business and Professions Code.

Romero said she is considering another bill that would require immigration attorneys to post their state bar number in all advertisements to make it easier to identify legitimate lawyers.

Combined, the efforts are intended to put fraudulent consultants and lawyers on notice that authorities are serious about prosecuting fraud against immigrants.

“We want to send a very strong message that these are people’s lives and dreams and futures that are being lost,” Romero said.

Prosecutors say immigrants make easy targets because they often don’t understand the complexity of the American citizenship process and are afraid to report fraud for fear of being deported. Law enforcement officials, who encourage victims to report scams, stress that they are more interested in prosecuting fraudulent consultants than in turning over undocumented victims to the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation.

The number of fraud cases “is just growing every year exponentially,” said Judy London, legal director for the Central American Resource Center.

Kenneth Fong, president of the Southern California Chinese Lawyers Assn., said the problem is so prevalent that his group recently launched a community outreach program to warn Chinese immigrants about consultants who falsely represent themselves as immigration attorneys in Chinese-language telephone books.

“The problem is just rampant,” he said.

No one knows exactly how many fraudulent immigration consultants and lawyers operate in Southern California, but authorities believe that the numbers are in the thousands.

London said at least half of the 15,000 immigrants who are served by her agency each year have at some point been victims of fraud or neglect by bogus consultants.

According to the California secretary of state’s office, 423 consultants have posted a $25,000 consulting bond but fewer than a dozen have posted the $50,000 bond, which was required as of Jan. 1.

In the next two months, the task force plans to launch a “wave of prosecutions” against consultants who have failed to post the higher bond or any bond at all, said Kathleen Tuttle, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney in the consumer protection division.

Prosecutors estimate that fraud costs immigrants up to $25,000 each.

But illegal immigrants can lose more than money. They can lose a chance to legally obtain permanent residency in the U.S. when consultants mishandle an immigration procedure or file asylum applications without merit.

That was the case with Miguel Flores, a Mexican immigrant who works as a newspaper distributor in Canoga Park. He said he paid an immigration consultant $2,500 in 1995 to help him apply for permanent residency.

Instead, Flores said the consultant submitted a political asylum application without notifying him. Flores knew he didn’t qualify for asylum because he came to the U.S. looking for work, not to escape persecution in Mexico.

The INS rejected the application. The consultant appealed the decision but failed to tell Flores about a crucial hearing date for the appeal. Flores missed the hearing and the INS ordered Flores deported.

Flores has since hired a licensed immigration attorney who is appealing the ruling on the grounds that Flores was misled by his consultant.

“I’m not worried about the money. I’m worried about the problem he put me in,” an angry Flores said.

According to INS officials, Flores’ consultant was relying on a common tactic among fraudulent consultants. Before 1995, immigrants who applied for political asylum with the INS were given a work permit pending an application review. Many consultants responded by filing thousands of false and frivolous asylum requests.

In 1995, the law changed and the INS limited the work permits to extreme cases. Still, many consultants continued to file frivolous asylum applications in hopes of getting work permits.

“It makes immigration judges distrust the ones that really need asylum protection,” London said.

Consultants Are Not Regulated

In 1998, state, federal and Los Angeles prosecutors formed the Los Angeles Fraudulent Immigration Legal Services Task Force. The team investigated hundreds of reports of fraud and prosecuted more than two dozen immigration consultants. Most of the consultants were convicted of failing to obtain a consulting bond, which is a misdemeanor punishable by a year in jail and a fine of up to $10,000.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno created a similar federal task force in San Diego.

Last year, at the request of the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, the state Legislature adopted a bill by Assemblyman Robert Pacheco (R-Walnut) to increase the consultants’ bond from $25,000 to $50,000. Under the legislation, victims of immigration fraud can collect damages against the bond by filing a request with the California secretary of state.

The law also makes it a misdemeanor to post misleading advertising or provide services without a written disclosure.

Otherwise, immigration consultants in California are largely unregulated and are not required to have any special training.

Fraudulent consultants often gain the confidence of illegal immigrants by offering friendly services in their native tongue. Consultants sometimes suggest that they have inside connections with the INS or some other federal agency.

For more than five years, Carlos Quintanilla, an El Salvadoran national, worked as a consultant in the Mid-Wilshire district, where he alternately represented himself as an attorney and as an INS official. He was neither.

Georgina Escobedo, a Mexican homemaker from San Diego, said Quintanilla told her he was an attorney who had access to INS computers.

Escobedo paid Quintanilla $800 to get her a work permit. But she said Quintanilla instead filed an asylum application with false information and persuaded her to lie to INS officials about being persecuted in Mexico for her father’s political ties.

The asylum application was rejected and the INS ordered Escobedo deported. She has since married an American citizen and has applied for permanent residency.

“I suffered a lot because I was afraid,” she said.

In 1998, Quintanilla was convicted of seven felony counts of grand theft and was sentenced to a year in jail and three years’ probation. He could not be reached last week for comment.

Prosecutors say a fraudulent consultant will often identify himself as a notario, a term that in Mexico refers to a legal expert. In the United States, the term refers to a notary public, a job that requires no legal training. In California, anyone without a criminal record who pays $72 a year and passes a short exam can obtain a notary commission.

A 1977 state law prohibits immigration consultants from advertising themselves as notarios because it gives a false impression that they can dispense legal advice. But the law is rarely enforced, as shown by dozens of street signs that advertise notarios in such communities as Pico-Union, East Los Angeles and South-Central Los Angeles.

Cerna, the Anaheim man, said he was swindled in 1997 by an immigration consultant who used the term notario on his advertisements and his business cards.

‘There Is No Easy Solution’

Cerna said the consultant, who works out of offices on Vermont Avenue near downtown Los Angeles, promised to obtain him, his wife and his daughter work permits for $3,000 per person. Cerna said he paid the consultant a $4,000 deposit in July 1997.

After waiting a year without hearing any word about the permits, Cerna said, he confronted the consultant, who told him that the laws had changed and that Cerna and his family no longer qualified for work permits. Cerna said the consultant then promised to get Social Security numbers for Cerna’s family members for $15,000. Cerna paid the consultant a $2,000 down payment and three monthly payments of $400.

But Cerna eventually realized he was being conned and reported the consultant to the county Department of Consumer Affairs, which is investigating the complaint. Friends convinced Cerna that he would not be turned over to the INS for filing the complaint.

Cerna has considered suing the consultant, but said he can’t afford to hire a lawyer.

“I wanted to talk to a lawyer, but I’m almost broke,” he said.

Officials at the Mexican Consulate say Cerna and other victims of immigration fraud can now get free legal advice every weekday at the consulate between 9:30 a.m. and noon.

“There is no easy solution,” said Antonio Rodriguez, a civil rights lawyer who provides pro bono legal advice at the consulate. “We need public education and help from the government to protect immigrants.”