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Green card marriage business alleged

Immigration officials say 30 Americans were involved in a ring that staged weddings with foreigners.

MIAMI - A two-year investigation has led to the indictments of 30 U.S. citizens involved in an apparent marriage fraud ring in South Florida.

Federal investigators found that undocumented foreign nationals were paying thousands of dollars to marry U.S. citizens to obtain green cards, which allow immigrants to stay in the country legally. The ring included the U.S. citizens they married, brokers and notaries, said Evan M. Grose, supervisory special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

About 102 fraudulent marriages were found, agency officials said Friday. Some paid as much as $5,000 per marriage.

The ring staged fake weddings, complete with cake and champagne classes filled with soda, to demonstrate to immigration authorities that the marriage was real.

Immigrants from countries including Argentina, Brazil and Colombia were arrested. They likely will not be indicted because they are viewed as victims, but they will probably be deported, federal officials said.

"It's much more common to see individual, single-issue fraud cases where someone does it as a favor to a friend or a relative's friend," said John Woods, assistant special agent in charge at the Miami office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The investigation, dubbed Operation Honeymooners, began when an agency employee discovered that a U.S. woman had filed petitions for several husbands over a period of about two years.

[Last modified October 2, 2005, 05:05:00]