AP News, August 14th, 2007
A man was convicted Monday in a marriage scam discovered after an immigrant told authorities that hundreds of people won permanent residency illegally by paying to be fraudulently married to Americans.
Prosecutor Michael Levy told jurors that defendant Peter Absolam was "caught red-handed acting as a salesman for an illegal scam."
The immigrant, Jeffrey Bruney, testified last week that he notified the FBI after he arrived in the United States in August 2001 and learned of the marriage scam.
Levy said Absolam took Bruney to the key players in the network, leading to charges against Phillip A. Browne, a U.S. immigration office worker, and his sister, Beverly Mozer-Browne, who owned a financial and legal aid business. Both have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.
Prosecutors say the fraud produced as much as $1 million in proceeds from fees paid by hundreds of immigrants. In return for payments of up to $16,000 each, they said, the immigrants were matched with U.S. citizens who were paid to enter sham marriages.
Of the 29 people originally charged in the case, 26 have pleaded guilty, choosing to avoid trial in a case built largely on the secret recordings of conversations by Bruney as he offered to pay $13,000 for a green card while the FBI listened in.
In a conference with the judge that jurors could not hear, Levy said Bruney was a civic-minded person who was affected by the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, just weeks after he arrived in the country from Dominica, a small eastern Caribbean nation.
"He, quite frankly, started to tear up when I asked him why it was that he would do something like this," Levy said. "And he said, `You hear about people, you hear about somebody giving out green cards and they can give them to terrorists. And I am looking to protect the country where I want to live.'"
Absolam lawyer Ellyn I. Bank attacked Bruney's credibility in closing arguments on Monday, saying his visa was going to expire in less than a year when he offered to help the FBI. She said it was reasonable for jurors to doubt that Bruney was "just doing it because I care about this country."
Absolam could face up to five years in prison at a Dec. 3 sentencing.
