When it came to immigration related services, Franklin Javier Perez-Rios said he could do it all. Need a United States government official? Immigration attorney? A paralegal? Or other immigration services professional. Perez-Rios could do it all when it came to gaining lawful immigrant status in the United States. Or so he said. Talk is cheap for a fraudster yet expensive for their victims. And while Perez-Rios claimed he was the jack of all trades, he was just the master of fraud.
Hundreds of foreign national victims hired Perez-Rios with the understanding that he could help them achieve legal status after years of residing in the United States. But Perez-Rios did not obtain status for any of the victims as he promised. Sometimes he filed the asylum paperwork with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) on the victims’ behalf. Sometimes he didn’t. Either way, he ran the victims ragged distracting them with bogus tasks like sending them to clinics in California where they were subject to unnecessary medical examinations and vaccinations. He provided forged documentation supposedly from the United States Government which led many victims to believe that they had obtained legal status in the United States when, in fact, they had not.
Victims paid Perez-Rios several thousand dollars each for his sham immigration services. Victims were falsely led to believe that much of this money consisted of “fees” that they had to pay to the United States government, including a fictitious “forgiveness fee” for illegally entering the United States. He profited at least $2.8 million dollars from victims during this scheme, and he used this money for gambling and a lavish lifestyle.
Perez-Rios should be baying the “forgiveness fee” Instead he will be going to prison for nine years followed by three years of supervised release. Hopefully that release is back to Honduras. Perez-Rios was also ordered to pay nearly $2.5 million dollars in restitution to victims of his scheme.
Today’s Fraud of The Day is based on “Honduran man living in Pensacola used ‘massive’ immigration scheme to make $2.8 million” published by The National Desk on March 13, 2024
A Honduran national living in Pensacola has been sentenced to nine years in federal prison for orchestrating a “massive immigration fraud scheme” involving over 425 victims nationwide.
According to court documents, Franklin Javier Perez-Rios, 29, orchestrated a fraud scheme from 2017-23 in which he claimed to be able to provide immigration-related services to foreign nationals living in the United States. He profited at least $2.8 million dollars from victims, according to the District Attorney’s Office, which he used for gambling and to fund a lavish lifestyle.
