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Immigrants: Promises For Work Permits Were Broken

Tampa Tribune file photo

Plagued with debt, flush with charisma, Sergio Pinto, left, arrived in Tampa in 2001. Back in Pittsburgh, he was many things: Restaurateur. An actor on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

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By KAREN BRANCH-BRIOSO | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 24, 2008

TAMPA - Plagued with debt, flush with charisma, Sergio Pinto arrived in Tampa in 2001.

Back in Pittsburgh, he was many things: a restaurateur, an actor on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," owner of a translation business. He came to Tampa, a town with a climate more like the one in his native Guatemala — and a far greater need for his talent of interpreting Spanish to English and vice-versa.

The change of scenery didn't change his money woes.

By March 2002, five months after signing a $627-a-month lease, Pinto was evicted from his Seminole Heights apartment for failure to pay.

Sergio Pinto

That year, Pinto apparently found a new enterprise to supplement translating work from clients such as the U.S. public defender.

His new clientele: illegal immigrants.

His sales pitch, according to many who said they responded to it: For $6,000, I can get you a work permit and legalize your status.

Problem is, they said, he never did.

The venture continued through last year at least, according to interviews with immigrants from Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico living in Hillsborough County. The only difference is the asking price went down. The fee, originally $6,000, dropped to $2,000 a person.

Pinto acknowledged he has acted "as an intermediary" to try to secure work permits, but he portrayed it as a recent venture. He blamed the lack of results on a woman he called Kenya Flores.

"She disappeared. We can't find her. She's a woman who offered to get work permits through an office in Orlando," said Pinto, 66, who lives in South Tampa. "I met her six months ago, eight months ago. She asked me to do translations for those documents. She said she could get work permits."

Pinto denied that he had been taking money from immigrants for several years, long before he said he met Flores. The Tribune could not locate public records of anyone by that name in the Orlando area.

"Maybe since one year ago — I don't remember exactly," Pinto said of his involvement.

Pinto agreed to two appointments for a more in-depth interview with the Tribune about the allegations. Each time, after meeting with his attorney, Richard Garcia, he canceled.

Joan Mathieu, an immigration lawyer in Clearwater who isn't familiar with Pinto, said that generally speaking, it's illegal for nonlawyers to give immigration advice.

"Someone needs to report this man to the Florida Bar. … You have a possible civil action for breach of contract. You have a possible criminal violation because giving legal advice is a felony," said Mathieu, who often hears from immigrants who lose money to people who promise — and don't deliver — on regularizing their immigration status.

"People get away with it for years. People are too scared" to come forward.

The Promises

Sandra, a Guatemalan immigrant living in South Tampa, said that last February, Pinto charged $6,000 for a promise to secure work permits for her, her husband and son. Unlike the others who spoke to the Tribune about their dealings with Pinto, Sandra and her family are in the United States legally — they arrived on tourist visas. The Tribune agreed not to use Sandra's last name because she feared a change in her immigration status.

She said she took Pinto at his word because he came recommended from their home country.

"My husband's brother was a colleague of his in school, and he told me he could help us legalize our [work] status," Sandra said.

"He deceives people, saying that as a part of his job he gets work permits for people. He doesn't say the name of the visa. He only says it's a program that's part of the federal public defender."

Fletcher Peacock, the federal public defender for the Middle District of Florida, said he doesn't know of any visa processing that his office would be involved in: "On occasion, there's a witness visa, but I can't ever remember us doing one. We don't do that kind of a thing at all."

Peacock said he knows Pinto and that he has done translating and interpreting contract work for the Tampa office for at least five years. He said, "He's very good, very accommodating."

He said he was unaware that Pinto had a sideline of soliciting immigrants' money with the promise of work permits and visas.

In Sandra's case, she said Pinto gave her his Bank of America checking account number. She said she made several deposits into the account, starting with an $800 payment Feb. 6, 2007.

After months of no results, the family began to demand a refund. Pinto gave them two Amscot money orders — for $500 each — on Feb. 1 and Feb. 15. He still owes them $5,000, she said.

Other immigrants say they've sought refunds from Pinto for years.

One illegal immigrant, a man who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said Pinto approached him in 2002 at his restaurant job. Pinto asked the restaurant worker if he wanted to legalize his status.

The man, who has a fifth-grade education, said he agreed to give Pinto an initial payment of $2,000 to help secure a legal work permit. He said he trusted the silver-haired man with the magnetic personality. He was a fellow countryman from Guatemala. He was friends with the people at the restaurant where he worked.

"I viewed him as an older man who lived near the restaurant, and I said, 'OK,'" the worker told the Tribune.

He said he gave Pinto cash in two payments of $1,000 each. A few months later, the man's two brothers also gave Pinto $2,000 apiece so he could help them get legalized.

"He didn't offer me a receipt. I didn't ask for one," the worker said. "He said, 'Go back to Guatemala, and you'll get your visas there.'"

They returned to Guatemala. His brothers never came back. But he did.

"I returned to Guatemala and came back here four years ago, but nothing ever arrived. This is money we've lost," the worker said. "He said he'd given the money to a lawyer."

Soon after the man paid Pinto, he told Margarito, a Mexican co-worker, about Pinto's promise of a work permit. An illegal immigrant, Margarito — and the other undocumented immigrants mentioned later in this article — agreed to detail their experience if their full names were not used. They fear deportation if they are identified.

Margarito said he talked to Pinto and agreed to pay him $6,000. He said he paid Pinto in three installments: $2,000, $1,000 and, about a year and a half after the first payment, $3,000 more. He said Pinto collected the final payment in a Walgreens parking lot in Brandon.

Margarito, who left school after the third grade to farm cornfields with his family in southern Mexico, said he didn't ask for a receipt.

"He said, 'This is a sure thing. We're going to give you papers. I'll be in charge of this. There's a person in immigration that I work with,'" said Margarito, who lost hope of seeing his money until he heard that Pinto had refunded another co-worker's fee.

"About 21/2 years ago, I spoke to him to see if he would return my money. He said he was going to send me a check. He asked me for my address. He never sent me the money. And that's it. He cut off his telephone. He changed the address where he lived."

When told that several people had said he had been soliciting immigrants with promises of work permits for several years — long before he said he met Flores — Pinto denied it. He said he had been making work-permit offers for only about a year.

Garcia, Pinto's lawyer, said in an e-mail that he could offer the Tribune a list of lawyers to whom Pinto had referred clients "who can attest to his honesty and integrity."

One couldn't remember Pinto. Another said she thought someone by that name had approached her to offer immigration referrals, but she never took him up on the offer.

Jamy Magro, a personal injury lawyer, said he has worked frequently with Pinto when he interprets for insurance companies when they interview Magro's Spanish-speaking clients. He said Pinto never referred clients to him, but he praised his work as an interpreter — and Pinto's personality.

"Really professional. Very good. Plus he's a pretty gregarious guy," said Magro, who said Pinto never mentioned anything about working with immigrants to him. "I would be totally shocked if these allegations turn out to be true. Sergio's always been on the up and up."

"I'm not a shameless person," Pinto said. "I don't have any money. I don't have any properties. If it were true, I'd have a mountain of wealth."

A History Of Debt

Pinto has for years dealt with mountains of debt.

In Pittsburgh, he filed for bankruptcy in 1987 with his second wife. Throughout the 1990s, he racked up thousands of dollars in unpaid utility bills. Landlords took him to court for unpaid rent. After his divorce from his second wife, she took him to court for unpaid child support. A dentist sued for nonpayment. Pinto's former partner in the translation business filed a lien against the business — and at least three former translators sued when he didn't pay them for their translation work.

A mortgage company filed for foreclosure against his and his third wife's home. When it sold — just about the time he moved to Tampa — some of those bills were paid off.

But the IRS lien against his translation business — for $16,208 in unpaid taxes as of Nov. 8, 1999 — still has not been released.

Despite Pinto's troubles in Pittsburgh, Magro said that in the past month, "He mentioned to me he's interested in leaving the Bay area because he hasn't made many friends here. He's looking to go back to his hometown of Pittsburgh."

A Receipt

Pinto said of anyone who suggests he was collecting thousands from illegal immigrants for the past several years: "They'd have to prove it with receipts. That's not true."

In most cases, such receipts do not exist.

Most of the immigrants told the Tribune they paid in cash — and didn't request a receipt.

A Mexican man named Ignacio, however, demanded a receipt from Pinto.

He provided a copy to the Tribune. It is dated July 18, 2003, and the signature appears to match Pinto's in other public documents. In it, Pinto agreed to act as a "Hispanic advocate" working with an "immigrant expert" to help Ignacio secure a work permit. "The below signed will receive no payment for his efforts. … Mr. Pinto must turn over all payments to the immigration processing professional."

The total cost: $6,000 — in three installments of $2,000.

The process, it said, would take 18 months.

"I asked for a receipt. I said, 'I'm not going to give you money, just like that,'" Ignacio said of Pinto.

A high school graduate who speaks fluent English, Ignacio did get his money back. He said he started pressuring Pinto when there was no sign of a work permit. By then, he had given Pinto two of the $2,000 payments.

He said it took two years before Pinto refunded the money: two checks for $2,000 each written a few months apart in 2005. But he knows several co-workers who he says didn't get their work permits — or a refund.

Enrique is a Colombian immigrant, living in Tampa on an expired tourist visa. He said he's also waiting for a refund.

A Colombian friend who had already paid Pinto told Enrique about the plan in 2006. Enrique called Pinto.

"He told me over the phone he was a lawyer who helped immigrants," Enrique said. "He said he could get me a residency card valid for two or three years that could be renewed a second time to start the process to be here permanently. He was going to get us a work permit and Social Security numbers."

Enrique said Pinto told him to meet in the Sports Authority parking lot across from WestShore Plaza on Sept. 28, 2006. Enrique gave him a check for $2,000.

Later that year and in early 2007, Enrique said, he deposited $2,000 more in cash into Pinto's Bank of America checking account. That money, he was told, would help his son in Colombia get a student visa to the United States.

"He said he knew a university administrator who could help out," Enrique said. "It's hard back in Colombia to get a student visa here."

At first, he was hopeful.

Pinto seemed to be processing their applications, Enrique said. He took them to have passport photos made. Then, Enrique said Pinto took him and his friend to a police station near the Falkenburg Road Jail to be fingerprinted.

"He was trying to get me a work permit to work with him as a translator," said Enrique, trained as an electrical engineer in his home country. "He said, 'There's no need for you to seek a sponsor. I can employ you.'"

That station is the District 2 station for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. All district offices offer fingerprinting free, said Judy Swann, general manager of District 2's Identification Section. People seeking professional licenses — from doctors to real estate agents to stockbrokers — often come in with empty fingerprint cards.

The employer-to-be sends the completed card to the state and pays for a criminal background check.

"For immigration [processing], though, they have to go to immigration for fingerprints," Swann said.

Enrique said that a few days after the technicians fingerprinted him and his friend, Pinto called and said: "Good news, you're clean."

Since then, there has been no more good news, Enrique said.

Now it is Enrique who makes the calls to Pinto.

He wants his money back.

At first, he said, he feared it wasn't worth the trouble, given his illegal status, to challenge Pinto.

"He's an educated person. Very calm. For a while, I thought I'd rather lose that money than have problems with him," Enrique said.

"But I want him to be honest with me. He tricked me. A dirty trick."

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

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