Authorities break up immigrant marriage-fraud ring

By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO
Media General News Service
Published: May 19, 2008

TAMPA — A month before his visa was set to expire, Nigerian native Joseph Adelegan walked into the old county courthouse on Pierce Street and took a bride: convicted felon Lane Rynes of Tampa.
Adelegan walked into Tampa’s federal courthouse Friday – in faded gray jail garb.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Bucklew sentenced him to time served – the two months in jail since his arrest for the sham marriage he used to seek legal permanent residency. That gets him out of jail. But like many other immigrants caught up in a federal investigation dubbed “Knot So Fast,” Adelegan will go from jail to immigration custody for deportation proceedings.
Adelegan, 51, is one of more than 80 people arrested throughout Central Florida in the roundup coordinated among federal prosecutors and immigration officials. At least five of the arrests were made in the Tampa Bay area.
The investigations are an offshoot of the Department of Homeland Security’s March 2006 launch of Document and Benefit Fraud Task Forces across the country.
The result: Document and benefit fraud investigations and criminal indictments have more than doubled in recent years. Convictions tripled to 1,609 in recent years through early 2007, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez.
In the most recent roundup, some are accused of participating in organized marriage-fraud rings. Adelegan found his wife through Patrick Thomas, who admitted he recruited U.S. citizens as spouses and sponsors to help immigrants – most of them from West Africa – to gain legal status. As part of his plea deal in 2003, Thomas provided information or testified against at least 47 people who participated in the marriage scams he organized. Adelegan is one of the last.
Rynes, 40, wasn’t charged. Some U.S. citizen spouses won immunity for their cooperation. But not all.

‘CRIMES BASED ON A NEED FOR MONEY’

In the Tampa area, at least two U.S. citizens are accused in the recent sting of marrying immigrants to help them secure permanent residency here.
Jesus Enrique Gallo of Largo is one. The native of Colombia is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was arrested last month and charged with marriage fraud. Prosecutors allege that last year he married a Colombian woman, Lydia Marleny Prieto, to help her circumvent immigration laws.
Gallo’s federal public defender, María Guzman, did not respond to requests for comment from the Tribune.
A Sarasota mortgage broker, Sandra Coleman, married two Peruvian men to help them secure residency here, court records allege. Coleman, 41, pleaded guilty to one count of marriage fraud with her most recent husband: Julio Valera-Muñoz, 37, the owner of a Sarasota tile business, JVM Floor Covering.
They wed on July 19, 2006, only months after Coleman divorced her first Peruvian husband, Silvio Vera-Esposto. The two men knew each other, Coleman’s attorney Ronald Kurpiers said.
Kurpiers said he didn’t know why she went through with the marriages, although “most people commit these crimes based on the need for money.”
Money played into the relationship from the start, according to statements Coleman signed in her plea agreement. Valera-Muñoz offered her $6,000 if she’d marry him to help him gain U.S. citizenship.
On their wedding day, outside the Sarasota courthouse, he handed her $2,000. The rest was due when the federal government approved his visa petition. But that never happened.
An officer in the Tampa office of Citizenship and Immigration Services who interviewed Coleman and Valera-Muñoz confronted them with discrepancies about their marriage. Coleman admitted it was a sham.
Valera-Muñoz pleaded guilty to the fraud in April.
“He was a very productive person here,” said Valera-Muñoz’s lawyer, assistant federal public defender Howard C. Anderson. “He had a tile business here and was very successful and had a work visa that was about to give out. I believe he panicked and didn’t know what else to do.”
Anderson said that once he serves any sentence, “he’ll be deported back to Peru.”

‘LEGALLY, I STILL THINK THEY’RE MARRIED’

Coleman’s first Peruvian husband, Vera-Esposto, 31, was a restaurant worker, according to his lawyer, Bjorn Brunvand.
The pair wed on June 7, 2002 and divorced in early 2006. Vera-Esposto bought a home in Sarasota shortly before the divorce. He, like Coleman, remarried a few months later.
He’s scheduled for trial in early June.
That doesn’t appear likely. In a court document filed Wednesday, Brunvand asked to postpone the trial until July in the hopes “that the parties will be able to arrive at a plea agreement.”
Coleman, as part of her plea deal, must serve as a witness in her ex-husband’s trial if it comes to that. She faces sentencing July 7.
Her current husband – Valera-Muñoz – is to be sentenced Thursday.
“Legally, I still think they’re married,” said Anderson, Valera-Muñoz’s attorney. “I don’t know if any proceedings have been started by her to annul or dissolve it.”
Adelegan had his marriage to Rynes annulled back in 2006. While still a federal fugitive on the marriage fraud indictment, he filed papers in Hillsborough Circuit Court to annul the 4-year-old marriage.
From an address in Queens, N.Y., he didn’t go into much detail beyond saying “the parties never lived together and only had a long-distance relationship before the marriage.”
Under “Marriage History,” the entry was as brief as the relationship itself.
“Date of Marriage: August 7, 2002,” he wrote.
“Date of separation: August 7, 2002.”