Ah, the joys of multiculturalism. We’ve reported many times on Lewiston, ME the town “lucky” enough to be chosen by Somalis and other Africans as their new home in America and the new home for a diversity of frauds as well. In Maine we’ve reported on immigrant food stamp fraud and medicare fraud and grant fraud and now comes word of marriage fraud. Hat tip: Tootywink.
From the Portland Press Herald:
PORTLAND — A Massachusetts man faces charges of conspiring to defraud the federal government by arranging numerous sham weddings between Mainers and people from Africa seeking to become legal residents of the United States.
Rashid Kakande, 37, appeared Monday in U.S. District Court in Portland for the opening of his trial before a federal jury. He is charged with arranging payments of up to $5,000 for women and men willing to marry people from Uganda and other African countries who were here on expiring tourist or student visas.
The ultimate goal of the marriages, according to the government, was to get permanent legal status and, eventually, citizenship. Most of the weddings were held in apartments in Lewiston.
The marriages themselves were worth $1,500, followed by additional payments as the U.S. recruits filled out paperwork to support the charade and met with immigration officials to convince them that the marriages were legitimate, according to court papers filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Gail Fisk Malone, the prosecutor in the case.
Some recruits got cold feet after the wedding and backed out of the scheme when told by immigration officials that pretending to get married for immigration purposes is a federal crime.
After his arrest in July, Kakande told an officer for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement that on certain occasions he had been paid $1,500 to arrange the weddings, court papers said.
He allegedly has used the money to buy land in his native Uganda.
There is a lot more, it reads like a soap opera! Read it all! Come to think of it, why doesn’t someone make a TV movie about one of these fraud schemes?
And, here is what the intrepid federal investigators uncover in my movie plot—there is a crime syndicate in Africa and the Middle East that actually teaches people like this guy Kakande how to set up schemes to rip off the gullible do-gooder Americans and our government. They send the money back to Africa (not to buy land!) where the international terrorists are waiting for their cut. Some of the money goes into seed money to send more scammers back to America—-you know, like those E-2 treaty investors who buy convenience stores and set up food stamp scams. If, here and there, one gets caught and sent to prison, oh well, there are many more on the way. So, what do you think—movie plot?
You know why it would never sell to Hollywood, because everyone knows immigrants are just hard working schlubs who want nothing more than a better life in America, right? And, besides they add such colorful diversity to boring old places like Lewiston, ME.
If you want to learn more about lively Lewiston, just type ‘Lewiston’ into our search function and I’ll bet you will find a couple dozen posts on the town.