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For immigration help, buyer beware

Immigrants face stiff consequences when their "attorneys" turn out to be fraudulent and unqualified.

By SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
Published October 16, 2005

TAMPA - Cristina D'Anello argued with the customs official at the Montreal airport.

"My papers are being processed," she said. After all, that's what her immigration attorney told her to say when flying back to her American husband in St. Petersburg after a short visit with her father in Canada, she remembered.

Checking computer records, the customs officer stunned her when he said, "There is nothing on you." She could not board the plane.

She ended up stuck for more than a year in Canada, where she was born.

Her "attorney," she later learned, was not really a lawyer and had not filed a single document on her behalf with immigration officials despite being paid almost $3,000.

It's an all too common and vexing problem, immigration lawyers say.

Out of ignorance, confusion or an effort to save money, immigrants turn to unqualified people and outright charlatans, often set up as notaries or paralegals, for help getting green cards, and work and travel permits. They find out too late that their "lawyers" haven't filed anything or have submitted falsified and error-ridden documents.

The Florida Bar found that negligence by the same woman who handled D'Anello's case caused a South African businessman to be deported. Another client spent a week in jail.

"She made our lives miserable," D'Anello said.

For years, nonattorneys have opened notary offices and played off the word confusion among immigrants from other parts of the world, especially Latin America, where notarios are specialized lawyers. Florida law now states that notaries must advertise their title in English only.

Even sophisticated, highly educated immigrants can find it hard to know whom to trust.

Rafael Arias came to Pasco County in the early 1990s with Chilean graduate degrees in international trade and marketing. In his country, he said, notarios are senior-level lawyers and retired judges. "I was very surprised when I learned anybody can be a notary," he said.

He came here on a student visa but married and decided to stay. Arias said he turned to a man who claimed to be a notary and a lawyer. But $1,500 and months later, Arias still didn't go to a lawyer, but he hired a certified immigration expert to sort out his snarled residency status.

"I felt ... a combination of embarrassment and anger," Arias said. "There was nothing I could do."

Eventually he obtained his green card and then his citizenship. Now 40, Arias is a Pasco County sheriff's deputy.

In 2000, the man Arias initially hired to help him signed an affidavit with the Florida Bar promising not to misrepresent himself as a lawyer.

Both legal and illegal immigrants can get deported for mistakes or delays in filing forms. Sometimes, illegal immigrants turn to those who promise to save them money and tell them what they want to hear.

"People are desperate ... and are driven into the arms of notaries who they think will fill out the paperwork for them," said Greg Schell, managing attorney at the Migrant Farmworker Justice Project in Lake Worth. Fearing deportation, illegal immigrants are not about to call the police, "and they are not going to get anything out of it," he said.

Legal immigrants can sue, though some say they don't want to waste more money and time.

The Florida Bar investigates only after it receives a complaint accusing someone of practicing law without a license.

"Basically, our main remedy is to get an injunction for them to stop practicing law," said Lori Holcomb, counsel at the Florida Bar. Afterward, it seeks a "cease and desist" agreement with the accused, who aren't required to admit guilt. The Bar also can try to get restitution or jail time if the accused starts to practice law again.

Sometimes the Bar refers cases for criminal prosecution, although Hillsborough and Pinellas-Pasco prosecutors said they rarely get such cases.

Statewide, the Florida Bar handled 170 cases of unlicensed practice of law involving immigration in the fiscal year that ended in June, down from 209 the year before and 176 the year before that.

The Bar sees only "the tip of the iceberg," said Loretta O'Keeffe, who monitored for unlicensed practice of law for the Bar in Tampa before going into private practice this month.

"Unfortunately, it's buyer beware," she said. "By going to someone that's not licensed, they are ruining their chances of being in this country legally."

That's something Maria Pulido of Dade City learned the hard way.

Here legally since the early 1990s, she paid $3,000 to a notary in Dover two years ago for help processing her green card. Pulido, 33, knew the woman was just a notary and not a lawyer, but was told the woman had sufficient immigration experience.

Last month, immigration officials notified her that her application was denied because of a major error and that she faced deportation. With two young children, eight siblings and parents all living in the area, she is paying an immigration attorney to fix the problem.

"I take some of the blame, but she almost ruined my life and the lives of my kids," Pulido said.

Cristina D'Anello, the woman stuck in Canada for 18 months, found Susan Cranfield in the phone book in 2002. She said she was an attorney working with Allen Davis Jr., a Tampa lawyer, D'Anello said.

D'Anello wanted help getting a permanent residency, or green card, after marrying Gregg Pollet of St. Petersburg.

Cranfield came to their apartment to collect information and money, once at 11 p.m. Pollet thought this was odd.

"I looked her right in the eye and said, "Are you an attorney?' " he recalled. "She said, "Of course I am.' She just didn't have her business cards."

D'Anello said she paid $2,800 in cash at Cranfield's request. That fall, D'Anello said, she asked repeatedly for legal advice about leaving the country to visit her father in Canada. Cranfield told her each time she'd be fine, D'Anello said.

After she got stuck in Canada, immigration officials told her nothing had been filed by Cranfield or Davis on D'Anello's behalf. They got $1,000 back from Davis, the couple said. But they lost thousands of dollars as Pollet quit his job as a mechanic, put their belongings in storage and moved to Canada to be with his wife until she obtained the proper visa.

Cranfield blamed D'Anello.

"She was told not to leave," said Cranfield, reached by telephone in New York where she now lives.

D'Anello was not the only one who stumbled into problems with Cranfield. The Florida Bar investigated Cranfield and accused her of representing herself as an immigration expert while working under Davis and earlier with Tampa lawyer Peter Macaluso.

Cranfield, the Bar alleged, provided legal advice and legal services, and worked as a legal assistant without the proper supervision of an attorney.

She worked for Macaluso from 2000 to 2002, the Bar said. When Davis left that office to set up shop elsewhere in Tampa, Cranfield went with him and worked as his legal assistant until December 2003. The two married that year, public records show.

The Bar's records on Cranfield involve eight immigration cases, D'Anello's among them. The others, as outlined in the Bar petition for an injunction against her, include:

Four clients who said they paid for help but got nothing.

A businessman whose family was forced to return to South Africa permanently after, the Bar said, no paperwork was filed for an extension of his visa and petitions for his wife and children.

Canadians Steve and Arda Farrington, who discovered too late that their labor certifications had never been filed. Their visas had expired, and they were forced to return to Canada and seek re-entry.

"We must pray that the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) officer believes that we are innocent of any wrongdoing and/or breaking any Immigration laws," Steve Farrington wrote in his complaint to the Bar in 2002. "If we are denied we will lose everything, our livelihood, our home, and possibly the freedom to re-enter the USA for any reason at all for up to three years."

A Tunisian man who went to register with immigration officials in January 2003, as required at the time of adult men from certain Arab or Muslim countries.

Registering the day of his deadline, he thought his expired student visa would not be a problem because he had paid $1,555 to have paperwork submitted for a green card. According to the Bar, immigration officials found nothing on file but his expired visa, and jailed him for a week until his wife came up with $5,000 for bail.

Cranfield says the Tunisian client showed up to register past his deadline. As for the other clients, Cranfield, now Susan Davis, blames them and the two attorneys she worked for, including her husband.

Macaluso, she said, was inexperienced in immigration law and wouldn't return clients' calls.

"You can't work for people who don't know as much as you," she said.

Macaluso was involved with three of the clients.

Allen Davis Jr. and Peter Macaluso signed off on everything she did, she said. Their mistakes got her in trouble, she said.

Florida Bar attorney Jodi Anderson Thompson said Cranfield misled Macaluso on the status of their immigration cases. The Bar obtained a reprimand from the state Supreme Court against Macaluso earlier this year for failing to supervise her properly and also for not communicating properly with other clients.

Macaluso, who recently was recognized by the Hillsborough County Bar Association for years of pro bono work, said he reimbursed the three clients that tangled with Cranfield through his office.

"I really don't have anyone to blame but myself for not being more attentive to an employee," Macaluso said. "I learned no matter who I think I can trust, I must supervise very intensely."

Allen Davis Jr. voluntarily moved to have his license put in "invalid" status based on incapacity in December 2003, according to the Florida Bar. He enrolled in a residential treatment program for substance abuse.

As for Cranfield, the Florida Bar settled the investigation against her after she signed an affidavit in July promising not to practice law in Florida without a license. She was not required to admit wrongdoing.

Cranfield, 47, who has filed for bankruptcy and faced mortgage foreclosures in Florida, said she works part time in "litigation preparation" in New York.

The Florida Bar has referred her case to Pinellas-Pasco prosecutors. Bob Lewis, assistant state attorney in Pinellas, said his office sent her file back to the Bar a little more than a year ago because the events occurred in Hillsborough County.

"This case looked like it would have been a good case," he said.

Hillsborough County state attorney spokeswoman Pam Bondi said her office never received anything on a Susan Cranfield or Susan Davis.

D'Anello said she was shocked when told the Florida Bar had closed its case. "How is that possible?" she asked. "I can't believe that's how you get off in America."

Times researcher Cathy Wos contributed

Saundra Amrhein can be reached at 813 226-3383 or at amrhein@sptimes.com

[Last modified October 16, 2005, 01:31:12]