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Scam Targeted Immigrants

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By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 15, 2008

Updated: 04/15/2008 06:14 am

TAMPA - Albert Dross saw opportunity in the vulnerable.

Starting in 2002, court records show the Tampa man started taking tens of thousands of dollars -- mostly from immigrants. Many were in prison, facing deportation.

Charismatic and articulate, Dross was a blind man who drew desperate people to him with his promises. He said he was a lawyer who could rescue them from prison and from deportation.

He was no lawyer. He did nothing to help the immigrants.

His victims, it turned out, were the lucky ones.

More often than not, when people are victimized in immigration scams, prosecutions are rare. Since unlicensed practice of law became a third-degree felony in 2004, Tampa police have charged three people with the crime. Dross was one - and the only immigration-related case. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has filed two such cases since 2004. Both were against Dross.

In Dross' case, many of his victims had receipts to prove their losses. They were willing to file complaints with police that - taken together - ballooned into grand theft charges that put him behind bars.

People like Maria Hernández of Winston, Ga., came forward after her brother in federal prison was deported to Mexico - long after Dross took $10,000 of her money with vows to save him from prison and deportation. Aldo Puerto of Tampa came forward, too. He went to police after making a $500 down-payment to Dross to help get his sister-in-law and her young children out of Cuba.

The sister-in-law, Saralie Paez, waited five hours outside her Havana home for a ride to the airport that Dross vowed would arrive. It never did.

"When I called her that night, she was sobbing," said Puerto, who paid the money to Dross, a "golden-tongued" man who said he had immigration connections in Cuba.

"I couldn't believe it when they told me he was jailed for fraud. I didn't think a blind man would lie to me."

Dross is serving a five-year prison sentence thanks to their efforts. Once he gets out, the court has ordered him to pay almost $50,000 in restitution to eight families, including Puerto and Hernández. That's what made them lucky.

Many immigrant scams are harder to prove. Evidence is sketchy, where often the transactions are cash-only with no receipts. Witnesses are scarce, especially among illegal immigrants who are reluctant to file complaints because they fear deportation.

"The hardest part is, no one wants to come forward," said Tampa immigration lawyer Mayra Calo, who says many clients come to her to try to fix their immigration cases that have been jeopardized by shoddy work, or no work at all.

"I've filed a lot of complaints, but I only get so far, because the immigrants never want to sign an affidavit."

Calo lodges the complaints with the Florida Bar's Unlicensed Practice of Law Committee in Tampa. Statewide, about one-fourth of the civil complaints filed for unlicensed practice of law involved immigrants. Since the act became a felony in 2004, the local committee has received complaints against 34 people accused of immigration-related unlicensed practice of law in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties.

The Florida Bar litigates the most egregious civil cases before the Supreme Court.

That's happened twice since 2004 with local cases.

Dross' was one of them. The Supreme Court dismissed the Florida Bar's civil case against him after it found he hadn't been served with papers that detailed the charges and asked for a response. He was in jail at the time, facing criminal charges in the consolidated case with several victims.

Cease-And-Desist Order

Lori Holcomb, director for the Bar's Unlicensed Practice of Law division in Tallahassee, said the civil suits are sometimes pursued against people in prison, sometimes not.

"The only thing we can do is get them to stop" the unlicensed practice of law, Holcomb said. "If they're in prison, they're stopped."

In the only other Hillsborough or Pinellas case litigated before the Supreme Court since 2004, the Florida Bar leveraged eight complaints from immigrants to get Susan Cranfield Davis, a paralegal, to agree to not engage in the unlicensed practice of law. For years, the complaints said, she had bounced from one law office to another, handling immigration cases without the proper supervision of a lawyer. In several cases, the immigrants said, she had told them she was a lawyer.

In the cease-and-desist order she signed, Davis admitted no guilt.

The Bar dismissed the case against her because she signed it - and, because she left the state: "If you return to Florida and once again practice law without a license, this matter will be re-filed and we will seek at least $8,000 in monetary penalties, $11,200 in restitution and costs," Holcomb wrote in an Oct. 3, 2005, letter sent to Davis' New York apartment.

Holcomb said it's more difficult to pursue a case against someone if they've left the state.

"Our main goal is to get them to stop practicing law in Florida," Holcomb said.

No Extradition

In 2004, the Bar lobbied to raise the penalty for unlicensed practice of law from a first-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony.

At the time, then-Florida Bar President Miles A. McGrane III told the Miami Daily Business Review that "our concern was that we couldn't get state attorneys to prosecute these cases because it was only a misdemeanor."

The local bar committee has referred one immigration-related case for prosecution since unlicensed practice of law became a felony: Davis' case. They sent the letter Oct. 17, 2005, to the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office.

A criminal case was never opened, Assistant State Attorney Pam Bondi said, most likely because the Bar had dismissed its own civil case against Davis and because she had left the state.

"You don't bring in someone from New York, you don't pay to extradite them on a third-degree felony of that nature," Bondi said.

As Dross' case shows, aggressive criminal prosecution of such cases can produce more lasting results. He went to prison. He will also have to pay restitution to his victims - if he's able to earn the money to pay them off after his release from Moore Haven Correctional Facility, scheduled for June 18, 2009.

Dross was prosecuted before - but not so aggressively. After the Sept. 11 attacks at the World Trade Center, he filed a fake death claim for a nephew who was very much alive in Brooklyn. On July 12, 2002, he pleaded guilty to third-degree grand larceny in the case. His sentence: $45,929 in restitution for the Red Cross, and five years' probation.

A few weeks later, he began the immigration scams from Tampa that landed him prison.

The Tip

Yet making the case for such prosecutions - particularly when the victims are undocumented immigrants - is another issue.

"From an investigative point of view, it's difficult," said Sgt. Jim Encanto, spokesman for the Tampa Police Department, who said there are frequent rumblings of such scams. "The biggest thing we're seeing now is the illegal aliens being victimized: 'I can help your brother, your cousin who's facing deportation. For $5,000 I can help him out.' These people usually don't speak English. Sometimes they don't trust the police to say what's going on. They get fleeced by these unscrupulous guys."

Late last year, Tampa Police Sgt. Ricardo Ubinas fielded a call from a local restaurant owner concerned that a man had taken $2,000 apiece from some of his employees.

"His employees had paid somebody named Sergio Pinto to expedite or facilitate an easier processing of their immigration applications - either for residency or citizenship, and he thought they were getting swindled from this guy," Ubinas said. "He wanted law enforcement to look into it."

Ubinas said he thought that Pinto was working with someone outside Tampa. He passed the tip to a duty officer with the federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Asked whether ICE pursued the tip, spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez said: "As a matter of policy, ICE does not confirm or deny the existence of any investigation."

The Tampa Tribune followed up on a similar tip from other immigrants. They all said Pinto, a translator, took thousands of dollars from them in exchange for promises of work permits or other immigration help.

Pinto didn't resolve any of their immigration claims. In a Feb. 24 Tribune article detailing the transactions, Pinto blamed the problems on an Orlando woman he called Kenya Flores - although the Tribune could find no one by that name in the Orlando area in public records.

Pinto moved out of his home a few weeks after the article. Friends and family said he'd gone to New York. A neighbor said he told them he was moving back to Pittsburgh.

Bondi said that Wayne Chalu, chief of the Economic Crime Unit for the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office, had "brought that issue, the Pinto issue, to the attention of law enforcement... That's as much as we can say on it, because we are not an investigative agency. Based on what our office read in the Tribune, there have been discussions with law enforcement on that issue."

PROTECT YOURSELF

Need help with an immigration issue? Do some homework on the person who is offering you help.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services cautions that notarios, notary publics and immigration consultants are not allowed to give out legal advice in immigration matters. They only "may help you by filling in the blanks on pre-printed USCIS forms with information you provide or by translating documents."

When using the services of anyone in an immigration matter, the USCIS offers this list of Do's and Don'ts:

1. DO NOT sign blank applications, petitions or other papers.

2. DO NOT sign documents that you do not understand.

3. DO NOT sign documents that contain false statements or inaccurate information.

4. DO NOT make payments to a representative without getting a receipt.

5. DO NOT pay expensive fees to non-attorneys.

6. DO obtain copies of all documents prepared or submitted for you.

7. DO verify an attorney's* or accredited representative's** eligibility to represent you.

8. DO report any representative's unlawful activity to USCIS, State Bar Associations and/or State Offices of Attorneys General.

* Attorneys must provide their qualifications to you, free. Ask for their Florida Bar number. You can check an attorney's status — their eligibility to practice, phone and address, their 10-year disciplinary history, when and where they graduated from law school — at this Web site: http://www.floridabar.org/names.nsf/MESearch?OpenF.... Or, call the Bar at 1-800-342-8060 and dial extension 5832 for Membership Records.

** Some nonattorneys are accredited by the federal government to represent immigrants before the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and/or in immigration courts. Below is a link to a list of accredited organizations and their representatives. If the notation "INS-only" is next to a name, that person can only represent someone before the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. If there is no such notation, the person can represent clients before both the BCIS and in immigration court: www.usdoj.gov/eoir/statspub%/recognitionaccreditat...

Sources: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, The Florida Bar, Executive Office of Immigration Review

Researcher Melanie Coon contributed to this report. Reporter Karen Branch-Brioso can be reached at (813) 259-7815 or kbranch-brioso @tampatrib.com.

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