Sailors among those charged in illegal-alien marriage scam
Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, November 15, 2005
NEW YORK – Six U.S. Navy crew members looking for quick and profitable marriages to illegal aliens face federal charges after they were among 10 people caught in an FBI sting operation targeting the sham unions, prosecutors said.
The six, assigned to the USS Eisenhower in Norfolk, Va., were nabbed after the FBI learned that a Baltimore man, Kenneth Adam Howard, 26, was recruiting men and women to enter sham marriages in New York, according to a complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Marriage to a U.S. citizen can aid with immigration and employment in America.
Howard, who was among those charged Monday with conspiracy, offered to provide people to marry illegal aliens at a cost of $3,000 to $4,000 per marriage, the complaint said.
The six Navy members and a former seaman who had been assigned to the USS Eisenhower came in recent weeks to New York, where they thought they were meeting illegal aliens from Egypt, Russia, South America and Europe, the complaint said.
Instead, they were meeting FBI undercover agents or informants and cooperating witnesses, prosecutors said.
The defendants could face five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
