Ringleader of California-based green card mill ‘wedding agency’ sentenced to prison

Four marriage fraudsters found their own match: a stay in federal prison.

Ringleader Marcialito “Mars” Biol Benitez, 50, pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston in September to conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and immigration document fraud. He was sentenced, along with several of his co-conspirators at the Los Angeles-based “wedding agency,” to prison terms.

U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper sentenced Benitez on March 7 to a year and 10 months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release — the charge carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Conspirator Juanita Pacson, 48, was sentenced the same day to two years of supervised release.

Casper earlier this year sentenced co-conspirators and staff members Engilbert Ulan, 43, and Nino Valmeo, 47, to respective terms of 14 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Even earlier, conspirators Peterson Souza got five months in prison and Felipe David got three years of supervised release.

The feds announced in April 2022 that they had secured indictments against 11 alleged conspirators who operated Career Ad Management LLC, which the feds described at the press conference as “a one-stop-shop” for immigration fraud.

The scheme was this, the feds say: The agency recruited U.S. citizens, largely homeless women, to marry foreign nationals who were seeking green cards — or permanent residency in the United States. Sometimes the sham weddings would take place as soon as a day after the fake “couples” met.

In exchange, the residency seekers would fork over as much as $30,000. Spread across the 400 alleged clients of the business, some of whom resided in Massachusetts, the minimum revenue for the fraudulent agency was some $8 million, according to the press conference. The estimated number of clients has since risen to more than 600 clients, according to new statements from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

The agency would backup the sham weddings with “wedding” photos, in which the newlyweds would kiss under flora wedding arches in the agency’s own chapel which, by the look of photos included in court documents, had all the charms of an office meeting room. Conspirators would also coach the pairings to pass immigration authority interviews to prove the legitimacy of the marriages, the feds said.

But perpetuating fraud against the immigration process wasn’t the end of the line. Because sometimes, the citizen spouses would get “cold feet,” and the conspirators would turn to exploiting a loophole in the Violence Against Women Act to gain their clients permanent residency anyway.

They did this by submitting fraudulent applications for temporary restraining orders against the citizen spouse who backed out — and then submit immigration petitions using Violence Against Women “provisions that permit non-citizen victims of spousal abuse to apply for lawful permanent resident status without their spouses’ involvement,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.