Woman Faces Charges of Fake Nuptials

Los Angeles authorities have charged a 45-year-old San Fernando Valley woman with brokering dozens of sham marriages for men from the Middle East and North Africa seeking U.S. citizenship.

While neither the LAPD nor the FBI has raised suspicions that Sharon Whiteside of Winnetka was involved in anything other than a phony-document ring, they have taken an interest in the case because similar scams have been linked to suspected terrorists establishing residence in the U.S.

“We have no indications that any of these people have terrorist connections,” said LAPD Lt. Adam Bercovici. “But it is an area we are looking at because we know other people, with similar operations, have been linked to terrorism.”

Citing the ongoing investigation, Los Angeles FBI spokesman Matthew McLaughlin declined to comment. He did say the FBI is concerned about foreign nationals gaining U.S. citizenship by any phony means, including sham marriages, particularly “if there is even a possibility they are doing it to forward a terrorist effort.”

During a brief appearance in Van Nuys Superior Court on Monday, Whiteside was arraigned on three counts of filing a false document and held on $100,000 bail after pleading not guilty. At the same time, $100,000 bench warrants were issued for three men -- two from Tunisia and one from India -- who allegedly took part in the phony marriages.

Whiteside, who is scheduled to appear in court again Jan. 6, was arrested without incident last Thursday at her home by LAPD detectives and FBI agents assigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The arrest, authorities said, culminated a months-long investigation of Whiteside for allegedly arranging phony marriages between low-income women in the U.S. and foreign men, almost all of them from the Middle East and North Africa. Over the course of several years, according to Bercovici, the alleged scam may have involved as many as 200 phony marriages, sometimes three or four in the same day.

Bercovici said women would sign statements indicating that they had been living with the men as wives, even in cases in which they had only met hours before.

The fee for arranging the bogus marriages ranged from $4,000 to $10,000, with the women also receiving as much as $1,000 a month while the men waited for a year to pass before they could end the marriage and still keep their citizenship, authorities said.

“It seems like she was doing a pretty lucrative business,” Bercovici said. “Based on what I have seen so far, it seems as if it was a profit-driven operation ... but there are other things we are looking at,” he said, refusing to elaborate.

Although sham marriages have long been used as a vehicle for illegally gaining citizenship, they have received more attention since the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area. Specifically, authorities have zeroed in on the ability of foreign nationals -- some of them with extremist links -- to enter the U.S.

In June, Lebanese-born Mohammed Hammoud was convicted in North Carolina of funneling funds to a suspected terrorist group. During the trial he never disputed prosecution claims that he married three women in the U.S. at the same time in an effort to gain citizenship.