A matchmaker pleaded guilty Thursday to a brazen green card marriage scam involving age-appropriate American spouses, photoshopped wedding albums, and cheat sheets to help strangers prepare for federal agent interviews.
Their lucrative operation in southwest Houston offered the recently-known couples a bowl of wedding rings of various sizes to choose from before heading out to tie the knot. Her fee included a chauffeur-driven ride to the Harris County courthouse for her wedding and transportation to her immigration interviews at Greenspoint.
Ashley “Duyen” Yen Nguyen, 55, a naturalized US citizen who has been in federal detention since May 2019, admitted before US District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt that she had helped at least 150 Vietnamese immigrants with false marriages would become permanent residents received in the United States. She pleaded guilty to conspiring in marriage, immigration and postal fraud, money laundering and false information in tax returns.
U.S. assistant attorney Adam Laurence Goldman, in exchange for full pre-sentencing collaboration with the government, said the Justice Department was ready to dismiss six charges, including a number of illegal naturalization procurements that would automatically have her citizenship removed. He also said he would not deny Nguyen’s motion to move down the conviction if she gave prosecutors enough help in finding co-conspirators.
She faces up to 20 years in prison for postal fraud and money laundering, while the sentences are shorter for the others. The sentencing date has not yet been set.
Her plea follows that of 54 others, including dozen of the fake brides and grooms. More than 20 co-defendants have charges pending in the case.
Hoyt asked Nguyen at the personal hearing if she had heard the allegations.
“I hear everything and I agree,” she said.
“Is it true?” asked the judge.
“Yes, it’s true,” she said, repeating the word “guilty” after Hoyt asked her to answer each of the five charges.
Nguyen, who had no previous convictions, not only arranged other marriages but also personally petitioned officials for the legal residence of her own fake spouse, co-defendant Hung Van Nguyen, Defendant Number 16, who promised to pay $ 75,000 for the honor. This defendant pleaded guilty to a handful of charges in the case last month.
The agent’s husband, Hung Phuc Nguyen, is charged with preparing forged immigration documents and taking the couple to court over their local unions and immigration talks. Her adult daughter, Khanh Phuong Nguyen, has brought a lawsuit against her former classmates from Elsik High School in Alief as false spouses for money.
Marc Carter, Nguyen’s attorney, told the court on Thursday that she learned French while studying in her native Vietnam. She said she was a housekeeper, but prosecutors said it was not true.
The broker admitted that between August 2013 and April 2019, her wedding business had been working on written agreements for hundreds of marriages in which immigrants promised to pay them in installments ranging from $ 5,000 to $ 25,000 until they received their green cards.
She advertised on Facebook in Vietnamese. According to one of the hearings, several dozen immigrants received documents.
In some cases, Nguyen has paired the newcomers with U.S. citizens linked to street gangs in Houston.
In her plea, she admitted that seven co-defendants had carried out these money exchanges with the help of an accountant, Lan Minh Nguyen. Some of these defendants are also charged with helping with the wedding albums being treated and driving to the courthouse. There were also at least 10 recruiters. She used real estate she had bought to stage apartments for the wrong spouse during on-site inspections.
The case came to light because the filing on the applications looked very similar: Immigration requests from Houston kept coming in almost exactly the same font and spacing, with fake insurance bills and other documents lined up in the same order. Each of the 30 petitions are known to have been deposited with the same post in Houston, west of the city.
A federal grand jury indicted 96 people in the spring of 2019 in what prosecutors called one of the largest marital fraud-related conspiracies ever documented in the Houston area. More than 200 indictments have been leveled against dozens of short-known couples and others who helped facilitate the weddings.
Investigators said the couples had submitted records showing they lived together at addresses where neither the bride nor the groom lived.
In her plea, Nguyen admitted that co-defendants Tuyen Thai Huynh and Peter Duc David Truong helped take photos of the couples for wedding albums, and then prepared the hopeful immigrants and their impromptu spouses for interviews with U.S. citizenship officials and officials the immigration authorities. They provided the couples with study guides and coached them on what questions to expect and how best to answer them.
Nguyen also agreed that she had failed to report income from the system of at least $ 278,170, which left the United States with a total of $ 77,888 in tax damage for the 2018 tax year. She approved a complete loss of the larger amount deal as part of her plea.
Nguyen came to the United States 18 years ago on a fiancé visa. She married and later divorced.
Investigation of Nguyen’s business found that the operation allowed for the 500 to 1,000 fake marriages described in the present case.
Carter said after the hearing on Thursday that his client’s goal was to help Vietnamese citizens enter the United States, but that she had taken full responsibility for the deception program.
Although it is harmful to break the law, his client did not endanger the people who chose to break the law.
Towards the end of the plea, Nguyen asked the judge if she could speak.
She thanked the judge and her lawyer, turned to the prosecutor at length, and called him Mr. Adam. “I really appreciate that,” she said, discussing Goldman’s support and openness to the plea. “I appreciate everyone today for giving me a very good day to sign the deal.”