Thursday, May 14, 2009

Scam Marriages - Another Side of Sham Marriage Intention?

Sometimes Americans enter sham marriages with foreigners to help them by-pass certain immigration laws. And certainly, they do that not just like that, but for a monetary reward. In 2006 an employee of Arlington county clerk office, scrutinizing certain public records before archiving them, paid attention to somewhat unusual number of marriages with foreign nationals registered within a short period of time in the jurisdiction.

Finally 24 persons faced charges either for facilitating sham marriages or marrying illegal immigrant for money. True thing, none of the fake "spouses" originated from Russia - most of them were from African country Ghana. From the US citizens involved in the fraud scheme, several already had criminal record, including one felon and one sex offender. Further investigation into the matter triggered the discovery of over thousand of fake marriages in Washington D.C. and the state of Maryland. Many of those fraudulent marriages had purpose of allowing illegal immigrants to get legal status of residence in America.

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