Fake green card & bogus marriage ring

For four and a half years, Beverly Mozer-Browne and her brother Phillip A. Browne, a former federal immigration officer, ran a $1.5 million scam out of a store in Richmond Hill - selling green cards and offering citizenship through marriage to American citizens, according to U.S. immigration officials.
Last week, on June 7, the brother and sister were arraigned on a 13-count indictment along with 28 others - two who had married new immigrants for money, two who recruited Americans for fake nuptials, along with 11 clients and 13 employees of Help Preparers Professional Services Incorporated, the shell business where the swindle was based. All of the defendants entered pleas of not guilty.
According to immigration officials, customers were offered permanent residence cards - more commonly called green cards - for a fee between $8,000 and $16,000 when they entered the small store, located at 106-16 Jamaica Ave.
Mozer-Browne allegedly provided over 200 hundred customers with green cards from April 2001 until November 2005 with the help of her brother, who worked as a district adjudication officer for the Federal Citizenship and Immigration Service in Manhattan.
According to the indictment, Help Preparers arranged false marriages and sent the paperwork - along with other fraudulent documents - to the Department of Homeland Security, where Browne approved the applications without interviewing the immigrants.
Of the 30 people arrested, nine were Trinidad nationals and two were Guyanese natives. In addition, immigrations officials also charged a Bronx reverend, Cameron Lloyd, who performed the illegal nuptials.
Immigration officials said that the scam netted nearly $1.5 million, and with the money, ringleaders Mozer-Browne, 49, and Browne, 40, purchased residences in Brooklyn and Kissimmee, FL.
The sting was one of the first for the newly-formed anti-fraud task force, one of 10 created across the nation in April to add to the main bureau in Washington D.C. After the defendants were arraigned, the indictment was unsealed. Since April, the 10 forces have begun investigating 250 separate cases of fraud.
In Queens, immigration advocates said that the fraudulent document business is a big one - especially in Jackson Heights and Corona. As Congress debates about the status of 11 million immigrants in the United States, many illegal immigrants are worried that if they do not get documentation, they will be deported.
“Every week I see dozens of people who want to marry someone for papers; others are asking for political asylum - and they don’t qualify for it. Now the government is checking every paper,” said Gardenia D’az, who works at as an immigrant counselor in Woodside. “Unscrupulous people are looking for financial gain and taking advantage of legions of hopefuls.”
According to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown, the street price, along Roosevelt Avenue, for a fake Social Security card is $40, a New York State driver’s license $50 and a resident alien card $60.
“Such bogus documents … could easily be used by terrorists to undermine the efforts of homeland security,” said DA Brown.