Immigration wedding scam ends in plea
Houston sham marriage broker admits guilt, agrees to help prosecutors inmassive case
A marriage broker pleaded guilty Thursday to running a brazen green card marriage scam, complete with age-appropriate American spouses, Photoshopped wedding albums and cheat sheets to help strangers prepare for interviews with federal agents.
Her lucrative Southwest Houston operation offered the recently acquainted couples a bowl of different-sized wedding rings to choose from before they headed off to tie the knot. Included in her fee was a chauffeured ride to the Harris County courthouse where their nuptials would be carried out, as well as transportation to their immigration interviews in Greenspoint.
Ashley “Duyen” Yen Nguyen, 55, a naturalized U.S. citizen in federal custody since May 2019, admitted before U. S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt that she assisted at least 150 Vietnamese immigrants with fake marriages at a cost of up to $80,000 apiece in hopes they would gain permanent residency in the United States. She pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit marriage, immigration and mail fraud and to money laundering and making false statements in tax returns.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Laurence Goldman said in exchange for substantial cooperation with the government prior to sentencing, the Justice Department was prepared to dismiss six charges, including a count of unlawful procurement of naturalization that would have automatically taken away her citizenship. He also said he would not oppose Nguyen’s request for a downward departure at sentencing if she gave prosecutors sufficient help in tracking down co- conspirators.
She faces up to 20 years in
prison on mail fraud and money laundering counts, and shorter terms on the others. No date has been set yet for sentencing.
Her plea follows those of 54 others, including dozens of the fake brides and grooms. More than 20 co-defendants have charges pending in the case.
Hoyt asked Nguyen at the inperson hearing whether she’d heard the allegations.
“I hear everything and I agree,” she said.
“Is it true?” the judge asked. “Yes, it’s true,” she said, repeating the word “guilty” after Hoyt asked her response to each of the five charges.
In addition to arranging other marriages, Nguyen, who had no prior criminal record, also personally petitioned officials for legal residency for her own fake spouse, co-defendant Hung Van Nguyen, defendant No. 16, who promised to pay $75,000 for the honor. This defendant pleaded guilty last month to a handful of charges in the case.
The broker’s common-law husband, Hung Phuc Nguyen, faces charges that he prepared fake immigration documents, ferried the couples to court for their on-the-spot unions and to their immigration interviews. Her adult daughter, Khanh Phuong Nguyen, has a trial pending on charges she recruited her former classmates from Elsik High School in Alief to be fake spouses in exchange for money.
Nguyen’s lawyer, Marc Carter, told the court Thursday she studied French during college in her native Vietnam. She said she was a home health aide, but prosecutors said that wasn’t true.
The broker admitted that between August 2013 and April 2019 her wedding business processed written agreements for hundreds of marriages in which immigrants promised to pay her in installments of $5,000 to $25,000 until they obtained their green cards.
She advertised on Facebook in Vietnamese. Several dozen immigrants did obtain paperwork, according to evidence at one of the hearings.
In some cases, Nguyen paired the new arrivals with U.S. citizens linked to Houston street gangs.
In her plea, she admitted to handling these monetary exchanges through seven co-defendants with the help of a bookkeeper, Lan Minh Nguyen. Some of those same defendants are also accused of helping with the doctored wedding albums and rides to the courthouse. There were also at least 10 recruiters.
She used properties she bought to stage residences for the fake spouses in case of site inspections.
The case came to light because the paperwork on the applications looked very similar: immigration petitions from Houston kept arriving with nearly identical typeface and spacing, with fake insurance bills and other documents lined up in the same order. Each of 30 petitions were deposited at the same Houston post office on the west side of town, according to evidence.
A federal grand jury indicted 96 people in the spring of 2019 in what prosecutors called one of the largest marriage-fraud conspiracies ever documented in the Houston region. More than 200 charges have been brought against dozens of briefly acquainted couples and others who helped to facilitate the weddings.
Investigators said the couples submitted documents stating they lived together at addresses where neither the bride nor the groom resided.
Nguyen admitted in her plea that co-defendants Tuyen Thai Huynh and Peter Duc David Truong helped snap photographs of the couples for wedding albums and then prepped the hopeful immigrants and their on-the-fly spouses for interviews with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agents. They provided the couples with study guides and coached them about what questions to expect and how best to answer them.
Nguyen also agreed she had failed to report at least $278,170 in income from the scheme, prompting a total amount of tax harm to the United States of $77,888 for the tax year 2018. She approved a total forfeiture of the larger amount as part of her plea deal.
Nguyen came to the U.S. 18 years ago on a fiancé visa. She married then later divorced.
The investigation into Nguyen’s business found evidence the operation facilitated 500 to 1,000 sham marriages in addition to those outlined in the case.
Carter said after the hearing Thursday his client’s aim was to help Vietnamese citizens come into the U.S., but she fully accepted responsibility for the deceptive scheme.
While there was harm in violating the law, he said, his client didn’t imperil the people who chose to become involved in the law breaking.
Toward the end of the plea, Nguyen asked the judge if she could speak.
She thanked the judge and her lawyer and addressed the lead prosecutor at length, calling him Mr. Adam. “I really appreciate it,” she said, discussing Goldman’s support and openness to the plea deal. “I appreciate everybody today for giving me a very good day to sign the deal.”