It’s really amazing how much criminal activity aimed at weakening our country that our government can shut down when they put some effort into it and start putting America and Americans first.Eleven defendants in New York were indicted Wednesday in what federal prosecutors describe as a decade-long, multimillion-dollar sham marriage network designed to get Chinese nationals legal status in the United States.
The scheme produced over 1,000 fraudulent marriages. Some participants paid as much as $100,000 for the illegal service. American citizens who agreed to serve as fake spouses were paid up to $30,000 each. Recruiters collected roughly $5,000 per American citizen they successfully brought into the operation.
This was not a mom-and-pop fraud. This was an industrial-scale enterprise. Attorney General Todd Blanche put it plainly at Wednesday’s news conference: “This scheme was not a quick fly-by-night operation, but rather a year’s long multimillion dollar cottage industry to criminally assist people.”
He also said what every American who has gone through the legal immigration process deserves to hear someone in authority say: “Gaining American citizenship and legal status to reside in this great nation is a sacred privilege, and we will ensure it is always done in accordance with the law, protecting our communities and national security.”
The mechanics were methodical. Defendants paired foreign nationals with U.S. citizens — individuals who often met for the first time moments before obtaining a marriage license. Sham wedding ceremonies were arranged. Photographs were staged to make the fake unions look real. Fraudulent green card applications were submitted to USCIS. The operation extended beyond New York into Massachusetts, Kentucky, Tennessee, and several other states, with connections reaching into China and Vanuatu.
The national security dimension here is not theoretical. Trump’s primetime address last month revealed that China compromised 220 million American voter files during the 2020 election cycle. The declassified intelligence documents showed Chinese nationals were targeted, recruited, and deployed as part of a systematic influence operation against American elections and institutions. A decade-long sham marriage network that puts over 1,000 Chinese nationals inside the United States — with legal status, social security numbers, and the ability to blend into American communities — is not merely an immigration violation. It is a potential national security infrastructure.
The Biden administration would have been well aware that these schemes exist. The FBI has prosecuted marriage fraud cases involving Chinese nationals for years. What changed under Trump is the willingness to describe what this is and treat it with the seriousness it deserves — not as a technical immigration violation but as a calculated attack on the integrity of the American immigration system and the national security of the country.
HSI Acting Executive Associate Director John Condon called the scheme what it is: a criminal network that “undermine[s] the rule of law, exploit[s] federal laws, and profit[s] from fraud.”
One thousand fraudulent marriages. A decade of operation. Eleven indicted. More to come, one hopes. American citizenship is sacred. It’s nice to see the Trump administration treating it as such.