As far as I know this doesn’t involve refugees (it might though), but since we have been talking about immigrants ripping off US taxpayers with the food stamp program, I wanted to be sure you saw this story from San Diego. Nawal Talia, apparently a lawyer or acting like one, helped rip-off the US taxpayer for more than a million bucks.
From San Diego 6:
SAN DIEGO (CNS) – A Spring Valley woman pleaded guilty Friday to taking part in a multi-year scheme to falsify medical certifications while working as an advocate for immigrants seeking help in obtaining U.S. citizenship or government benefits.
Nawal Talia, 57, admitted during a hearing in federal court in San Diego that she recruited patients for National City psychologist Roberto Velasquez, who was sentenced earlier this year to 21 months in prison and ordered to repay more than $1.5 million to the Social Security Administration in the largest single restitution order in the agency’s history.
As part of her job, Talia for several years submitted documents to federal agencies on behalf of her clients, certifying that they were mentally disabled. Rather than obtain benefits legitimately, she and Velasquez worked together to falsify medical certifications and fabricate patient histories, according to prosecutors.
Talia admitted that she helped Velasquez falsify disability-exception certification forms used by the Department of Homeland Security during the naturalization process and medical letters used by the Social Security Administration to award Supplemental Security Income and disability payments.
Go to the US Attorney’s office press release which describes in more detail the egregious “massive” crime she committed.
As is often the case in these scam reports, I could not find a photo of Ms. Talia. The graphic and her listing is here.
Someone really needs to write a whole blog on the full array of fraud schemes being perpetrated by immigrant-fraudsters on the US government (on us!).
Related maybe: Yesterday I got a notice about a teleconference on immigrant scams (the notice went to refugee “stakeholders”) that the USCIS is putting on. At first I thought it was about immigrant-perpetrated scams, but it’s about protecting immigrants from shyster lawyers (like Talia?). I figured it wasn’t worth posting on in a separate post, but maybe it will interest you.