Texas woman helped arrange sham marriages, even providing fake wedding albums, feds say
A woman pleaded guilty in a fake marriage scam to help foreigners obtain legal permanent resident status, federal officials in Texas said on Thursday.
Ashley Yen Nguyen, 55, admitted she ran a criminal organization out of Houston, but she had people working across the state and in Vietnam, the news release said. Nguyen helped arrange at least “40 sham marriages in which a Vietnam national would pay her group $50,000 to $70,000 to marry a wife or husband in the United States to fraudulently obtain lawful permanent resident status,” the release said.
The ring even provided fraudulent wedding albums to make it appear that the clients had a ceremony that didn’t take place at a courthouse in order to give the illusion of being authentic, officials said. Nguyen also noted that the fake couples did not live under the same roof and had no intention of living together “contrary to documents and statements submitted to federal authorities,” the release said.
Nguyen admitted to preparing the sham spouses for their interviews with immigration officials by providing made-up facts for the “couples” to study and recite in order to prove that their relationship was authentic, which included information regarding their daily routines while living together, officials said.
With the money given by the ring’s clientele, Nguyen purchased multiple residences and used them as part of the scheme to “either collect, distribute the proceeds and/or stage some of the rooms for the times when authorities indicated they would conduct a site inspection,” the release said. “The rooms were set up to appear as if they belonged to the fake spouses.”
Nguyen faces up to 20 years in prison and a possible $250,000 fine.
This story was originally published November 5, 2020 at 7:50 PM with the headline "Texas woman helped arrange sham marriages, even providing fake wedding albums, feds say."