Ilonggo escapes jail term; 4 others convicted in fake marriage scam

“I love you and it is for real. I don’t care about how others categorize my love for you.” 

– Andrew Bolt

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

ILOILO City resident Felipe David has escaped a jail term while four other fellow Filipino co-accused in a large-scale marriage fraud “agency” based in Los Angeles have been convicted by the Boston court, according to information I obtained from the U.S. Department of Justice March 12.

“Tapos na ako sa kaso. Okey ang sentencing, probation lang no jail time (I’m done with my case and the sentencing is okay. I got a probation but no jail time),” confirmed David, 53, a resident of Molo district in Iloilo City, Philippines, in a Messenger sent to this writer.

David’s co-accused, the mastermind, Marcialito Biol Benitez, a.k.a. “Mars,” 50, who pleaded guilty in September 2023, was sentenced on March 7, 2024 by U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper to 22 months in prison and three years of supervised release. 

FELIPE DAVID (Middle) with his high school classmate Rommel Leal (Left) and the author in New York City in 2019.

David initially thought Benitez’s sentencing would be at 2 o’clock in the afternoon on January 10, 2024, thus he asked this writer to check with my Boston source or “get access on the news in the Boston Supreme Court.”

David, who referred clients to the agency for assistance with VAWA-based applications, was sentenced to three years of supervised release.

 

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The U.S. Department of Justice confirmed that four California-based individuals have been sentenced in federal court in Boston for their roles in running a large-scale marriage fraud “agency” that arranged hundreds of sham marriages for the primary purpose of circumventing immigration laws. 

This included, among other things, obtaining green cards under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by claiming falsely that the undocumented clients had been abused by American spouses.

The defendants, all Philippine nationals residing in Los Angeles, were arrested and charged along with seven others with conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and immigration document fraud in April 2022. 

Also on March 7, 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Juanita Pacson, 48, was sentenced by Judge Casper to two years of supervised release with the first four months on home detention after previously pleading guilty in September 2023.

Engilbert Ulan, 43, was sentenced on March 6, 2024 by Judge Casper to 14 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Ulan was convicted by a federal jury in November 2023.

On Jan. 11, 2024, Nino Valmeo, 47, was sentenced by Judge Casper to three years of supervised release with the first six months on home confinement after pleading guilty in August 2023.

Benitez, with the help of co-defendants, operated what he and others referred to as an “agency” that arranged hundreds of sham marriages between foreign national “clients” and United States citizens, including at least one foreign national who resided in Massachusetts. The agency then prepared and submitted false petitions, applications and other documents to substantiate the sham marriages and secure adjustment of clients’ immigration statuses for a fee of between $20,000 and $35,000 in cash.

 

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Benitez operated the agency out of brick-and-mortar offices in Los Angeles, where he employed co-defendants Ulan and Valmeo as staff. Ulan and Valmeo assisted with arranging marriages and submitting fraudulent marriage and immigration documents for the agency’s clients. Benitez relied on several other co-conspirators to recruit U.S. citizens to marry the agency’s clients in exchange for payment.

After pairing foreign national clients with citizen spouses, the United States Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts said Benitez’s agency staged fake wedding ceremonies at chapels, parks and other locations, performed by hired online officiants. 

Pacson, a friend of these co-defendants who worked at one of the chapels, assisted with sham wedding ceremonies and marriage documents. For many clients, the agency would take photos of undocumented clients and citizen spouses in front of prop wedding decorations for later submission with immigration petitions. 

Benitez’s agency then submitted fraudulent, marriage-based immigration petitions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency responsible for granting lawful permanent resident status. Benitez, Ulan, Pacson, and others, advised clients about creating and maintaining the appearance of legitimate marriage to their spouses, it added.

 

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Ulan conducted practice interviews with the agency’s clients and their fake spouses for the purpose of preparing couples to pass required interviews with immigration authorities. He coached the sham couples to provide the same fabricated answers to questions posed during green card interviews and conceal the fraudulent nature of the marriages.

Benitez, Ulan, Valmeo, and Pacson assisted clients with preparing fraudulent supporting documents submitted as “evidence” of the marriages’ legitimacy. Ulan, Valmeo and Pacson also rented the use of their apartment addresses to clients who lived outside of Los Angeles so those clients could list these addresses as their own on green card applications and related documents, to make it appear to immigration authorities that they were living with their sham spouses in the Los Angeles area. Ulan and Valmeo also received cash commissions for referring new clients to the agency. 

Benitez’s agency would assist certain clients – typically those whose spouses became unresponsive or uncooperative – with obtaining green cards under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) by claiming the undocumented clients had been abused by alleged American spouses. Specifically, Benitez, Valmeo, and others, would submit fraudulent applications on clients’ behalf for temporary restraining orders against spouses based on fabricated domestic violence allegations. 

 

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Benitez’s agency would then submit the restraining order documentation along with immigration petitions to USCIS, in order to take advantage of VAWA provisions that permit non-citizen victims of spousal abuse to apply for lawful permanent resident status without their spouses’ involvement.

Benitez’s agency arranged sham marriages and submitted fraudulent immigration documents for at least 600 clients between October 2016 and March 2022.

Several co-defendants were previously sentenced by Judge Casper for their roles in this scheme. Peterson Souza, who referred non-citizens to the agency for a fee was sentenced to five months in prison and three years of supervised release with the first five months on home detention.

Acting United States Attorney Joshua S. Levy; Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Office; Chad Plantz, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in San Diego; and Alanna Ow, Director of U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, San Diego District made the announcement March 12. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California provided valuable assistance in this matter. Assistant U.S. Attorneys David M. Holcomb and Leslie A. Wright of the Securities, Financial & Cyber Fraud Unit prosecuted the case.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)

‘Closure of Iloilo borders will kill Panay economy’

“When trying to teach someone a boundary, they learn less from the enforcement of the boundary and more from the way the boundary was established.”

—Bryant H. McGill

By Alex P. Vidal

A FILIPINO-American national from Lambunao, Iloilo has decried the order to restrict or close the Iloilo borders, saying “it will kill the economy in Panay Island.”

New York-based Rommel Leal, 50, an entrepreneur and travel enthusiast, said if Iloilo borders are closed, other provinces in Panay dependent on Iloilo economy like Antique, Aklan, Capiz, and Guimaras “would be the hardest hit if their goods, manpower, and other components of economic activity can’t reach Iloilo vice versa.”

Leal said he received feedbacks from relatives and traders that “actually only the roads have been closed.”

“There are still access entry areas in far flung villages away from the national roads in the Iloilo and Capiz boundary that aren’t monitored by authorities,” he said.  

Leal said he found it “unnecessary” to restrict movements from Iloilo to other provinces “because Panay is one island and all its provinces don’t have direct road access to other islands.”

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It’s impossible for COVID-19 infected residents from Cebu and other islands to enter Iloilo unless they will arrive via vessels in the sea ports, said Leal, a resident of the United States since 2008.

Leal sympathized with Antique in particular because the province, he said, “relies on Iloilo as the gateway for their goods and workers to other provinces vice versa.”

“I pity Governor (Rhodora) Cadiao who had to make a public appeal to the provincial government of Iloilo not to implement a strict border restrictions,” observed Leal. “It (closure of Iloilo borders) will add misery to the Antiquenos who were already badly affected by the long lockdown.” 

Iloilo Governor Arthur “Toto” Defensor Jr signed an executive order dated July 1, 2020 restricting persons from traveling to the province from July 1 to 15, thus closing the Iloilo borders.

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Only the following are exempted from Defensor’s travel ban:

-Government officials and personnel traveling in the performance of their functions;

-Health and emergency frontline frontline personnel and duly athorized Humanitarian Assistance Actors (HAAs);

-Persons traveling for medical or humanitarian; 

-Persons granted passage to the airport for travel abroad or from the airport to the border;

-Overseas Filipino workers (OWs) returning to the province in tripsl orgnaized by Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA); and 

-residents of Iloilo and Guimaras.

As of this writing, Aklan and Capiz reportedly also ordered the closure of their borders.

Leal also suggested to authorities to life the lockdown imposed on St. Paul’s Hospital in Iloilo City after eight residents doctors had been reported infected with COVID-19.

“There are so many hospitals in the world today where hundreds of health workers have been infected buy they were not ordered lockdown. Hospitals are essential places in the time of pandemic. They should be opened and be made accessible to everyone,” he concluded. 

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NOT all of the 98 people, including village officials in Western Visayas, charged by the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group–Region 6 (CIDG-6) recently over alleged irregularities in the distribution of the government’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP), pocketed the money intended for the poorest of the poor.

Some of them were charged criminally for abuse of authority and harassment of their political nemesis who reside in their villages. 

But CIDG-6 Director, Lieutenant Colonel Gervacio Balmaceda Jr., has confirmed that some of those facing criminal cases have been the objects of allegations they included friends and relatives ineligible in the SAP’s first tranche.

Village officials who stole the SAP intended for their residents will only have themselves to blame once the criminal raps will progress in court.

Pocketing the money intended for those already suffering from virus-induced lockdown was tantamount to adding insult to the residents’ injury.

Many families until now don’t have enough food to eat for their daily sustenance because most of their breadwinners had been stranded in the house for at least three months.

Some of these breadwinners lost their jobs and will never regain them due to so many restrictions and unpredictable economic doldrums that developed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

 (The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

   

‘Fil-Ams willing to apply for RP visa’

“We believe that visa quotas should be lifted and people should visit anywhere they wish freely.”

—Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

By Alex P. Vidal

I WAS inside a giant mall in Brooklyn January 6 evening when Bombo Radyo Iloilo anchorman John Felco Talento interviewed me “live” about the reaction of the Americans on the threat of Iran to retaliate “harshly” after it’s A-1 military genius, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, was slain on January 3 in an airstrike by the United States as ordered by President Trump.

I said during the interview that everything was normal in as far as the regular activities of the Americans are concerned.

They appeared to be not bothered at all by the dangerous threat of violence from the powerful Islamic state even if the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has raised a heightened alert for Iran’s possible attack anytime in major U.S cities.

I further said that Americans who are outside the United States or those vacationing or working in other countries, notably in the Middle East, are the ones who are exposed to danger and are now worried for their safety as the US-Iran conflict accelerates to a higher level day by day based on reports.

Americans already inside the US territory believe the government can adequately and sufficiently protect them from any possible foreign invasion because of their well-organized, high-tech, synchronized and very durable security system, I added.

What we worry here is the possible violence to be perpetrated in crowded places and in the subway by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group, which has been designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization, and may have sleeper cells in the U.S. that are ready to retaliate.

We will remain alert and vigilant. 

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IF the Duterte administration will push through with its threat to require American citizens to obtain a visa to enter the Philippines, “I have no problem with that,” an Iloilo-born Filipino-American (Fil-Am) declared January 6 in New York City.

“It will most likely be an arrival visa. We can always pay for that visa upon our arrival and, ergo, we can be with our loved ones for a temporary visit,” predicted 49-year-old Rommel Leal of Lambunao, Iloilo. 

Leal, a laborer, is among the New York-based Fil-Ams who will go home to watch the Dinagyang Festival in Iloilo City in the third week of January.

He appealed to the Philippine government to “leave the Fil-Ams alone and don’t make life difficult for us because we have nothing to do with its conflict with the US government.”

President Duterte has threatened to require a visa to all visiting American citizens in an apparent act of retaliation after the Trump administration banned from entering the United States all Filipino government officials responsible for the continued jailing of opposition firebrand, Sen. Leila de Lima.

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In a tit for tat, Mr. Duteret has ordered the banning of three U.S. senators who authored a Senate Bill where the banning of anti-De Lima officials was contained.

It became a law after being signed by President Trump most recently. 

Leal, however, said he doubted if President Duterte was serious with his threat especially if he realized that millions of balikbayan Fil-Ams would be affected.

Leal did not believe that the Philippine government would go to the extent of spending additional funds and manpower for the Philippine Consulate in the United States just to process travel visas for Fil-Ams.

He suspected that President Duterte “was only carried by his emotion” when he issued the visa threat because of his long-standing rift with the US Embassy in Manila.

The ban on the three U.S. senators had no effect whatsoever, Leal said, because they have no interest in visiting the Philippines, in the first place.

But a visa requirement for returning Fil-Ams or, in a worst case scenario, a ban on Americans who have nothing to with the diplomatic quarrel, will have a serious effect on the Philippine tourism and economy, warned Leal, who flies to the Philippines at least three times in one year.

Assets of Filipino politicians covered by the ban are also in danger of being “frozen,” observed Leal.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

'Iloilo City cleaner than New York City’s Queens’

“I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.”
--Narendra Modi

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- A Filipino-American vacationer from New York City has agreed with Philippine Supreme Court Chief Justice Lucas Bersamin that “Iloilo City now looks like Singapore in terms of cleanliness and orderliness.”
Rommel Leal, 48, who lives in Jamaica in New York City, said he wanted to see for himself if Bersamin’s observations about Iloilo City were true, thus “surveyed” the City of Love when he went home for a week-long vacation first week of April this year.
Bersamin and his wife were reportedly impressed by the city’s cleanliness, including the Iloilo River, when they visited Iloilo City during the 17th National Convention of Lawyers held at the Iloilo Convention Center from March 28-31, 2019.
“In fact, Iloilo City is cleaner than the Queens (a borough in New York City),” said Leal, who grew up in Lambunao, Iloilo.

Queens is known for the JFK and LaGuardia, the two important New York City airports. It is also known for the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, a remnant of the 1964 World's Fair. Nearby are CitiField (home of the Mets) and the Arthur Ashe Stadium, home to the US Open Tennis tournament.
“Every morning, I saw a lot of street sweepers combing the highways, especially in the Iloilo Business Park and in the Diversion Road,” observed Leal.

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Leal hailed the local government’s efforts to maintain cleanliness and orderliness in Iloilo City even as he noted “an apparent increase in the number of tourist arrival” during his short visit.
Leal had intended to spend only his time in Boracay in Malay, Aklan in his recent vacation, but decided to travel in other parts of Panay on his way to Iloilo City “to find out if there were any physical progress and development outside Metro Manila.”
“I became curious when Chief Justice Bersamin praised Iloilo City and compared it to Singapore,” he said. “From Boracay I traveled to Iloilo City and passed by Antique and Capiz.”
Leal said he noticed that Roxas City had a “poor and undeveloped highways including the Passi City roads while progress was seen in the roads in Antique and in the municipalities of San Joaquin and Guimbal in the first district of Iloilo.”

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He also credited the Duterte administration for the progress in Mactan International Airport where he arrived from the US on his way to Boracay.
Leal said he surmised that because of the many infrastructure projects that are visible all over the country undertaken under the present administration, “people might ignore the issues about the president family’s alleged involvement in the narco business as alleged by a certain video maker Bikoy.”
Because of what he saw, Leal vowed to encourage other US-based Filipinos to visit Iloilo City and Panay Island “so they can also witness for themselves how tourism there has developed by leaps and bounds.”
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

Fil-Am customer: Don’t boycott Starbucks

“I noticed that I got a better space in the line in Starbucks when I had my tattoo. People associate tattoos with a certain edge. Then I open my mouth, and something completely different comes out.”
--Wentworth Miller

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- A Filipino-American “regular” customer of Starbucks has urged his fellow Fil-Ams “not to be carried away by their emotions” and to reject a call to boycott the behemoth American coffeehouse chain over an incident in Philadelphia on April 12 where two black customers were arrested by cops after the manager called 911.

ROMMEL LEAL (left) and the Author inside Starbucks New York

“No need to boycott Starbucks,” enthused Rommel Leal, 47, of Jamaica, Queens. “The actuation (of the manager) to call the police was wrong, yes, but the customers, I mean all customers, should at least order something like a cup of coffee or a cake while waiting for someone.”
Leal, who regularly orders freshly brewed coffee from the popular coffeehouse, considered as third largest fast food restaurant chain by number of locations in the world, said, “the customers must also understand that any establishment is into business.”

RIGHT

“The management has the right to ask the customers to order something once they are inside the establishment, but they must do it in a nice manner,” stressed Leal, who hails from Lambunao, Iloilo in the Philippines.
He admitted that “there are still some racist characters in the labor industry in America in this generation” but “the incident in Starbucks Philadelphia does not usually occur regularly.”
He emphasized that the manager erred when she called the police since the two customers were not making any trouble and did not even panic when the cops handcuffed them.
Leal said if not for the recorded video of the arrest, which became viral and was viewed 11 million times on Twitter, the incident wouldn’t have attracted a tidal wave of protests and #BoycottStarbucks campaign at the store, in Philadelphia’s Center City.
In order to avoid the predicament of the two black customers identified as Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, both 23, Leal exhorted customers “in any store” to place an order “even if it is the cheapest coffee or cake.”

PATRONIZE

“I regularly patronize the Starbucks anywhere in New York and in New Jersey because of the nature of my job, but once I enter the store’s premises, I immediately order a cup of coffee. It’s not in my nature to stay there doing nothing,” Leal said. “I know I am in a premises that is engaged in a legitimate business.”
Nelson and Robinson claimed they entered the Philadelphia Starbucks for a business meeting involving real estate that they had been working on for months.
Nelson asked to use the restroom and was told by the manager that they were only for paying customers. He then joined Robinson at a table to wait for the person they planned to meet. The manager approached, asked them if they wanted to order drinks. They declined.
The police were called approximately two minutes after the men entered the store, it was reported.
Nelson said: “Initially, as soon as they approached us, they just said we have to leave. There was no question of, you know, was there a problem here between you guys and the manager?”
As a result of the furor, the Starbucks management will close all his 8,000 stores in the United States on May 29 to provide anti-bias training to 175,000 employees.
Leal said he hoped the incident in Philadelphia will not happen to other customers who are not white like him.
“I know my rights. It can’t happen to me as long as I order and pay my coffee,” he concluded.