A Philippine national living in Los Angeles pleaded guilty Wednesday to running a large-scale marriage fraud scheme that arranged hundreds of sham marriages to evade immigration laws.
Marcialito Biol “Mars” Benitez, 49, pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and immigration document fraud. US District Judge Denise Casper scheduled sentencing for 10 January.
Benitez was arrested and charged in April 2022 along with 10 other Southern California residents. He is the seventh defendant to plead guilty in the case.
The business prepared and filed false petitions, applications and other documents to support the sham marriages and secure adjustment of clients’ immigration status for a fee of between $20,000 and $30,000 in cash, prosecutors said.
Benitez operated the agency from offices on Wilshire Boulevard, where he allegedly employed co-conspirators as employees.
Specifically, some of the defendants helped arrange marriages and file fraudulent marriage and immigration documents for the agency’s clients, including false tax returns. Other defendants served as “brokers” who recruited US citizens willing to marry the agency’s clients in exchange for a fee and monthly payments from the clients’ spouses after the marriage, federal prosecutors said.
According to his plea agreement, after matching foreign national clients with citizen spouses, Benitez and his associates would stage fake wedding ceremonies at chapels, parks and other locations, performed by hired online officiants. 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 and his co-conspirators would also help certain clients – typically those whose spouses had become unresponsive or uncooperative – obtain green cards under the Violence Against Women Act by claiming that the undocumented clients had been abused by purported American spouses, prosecutors said.
Benitez’s agency arranged sham marriages and filed fraudulent immigration documents for at least 600 clients between October 2016 and March 2022.
The charge of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud carries a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, prosecutors said.
