Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment Wednesday charging 11 people with orchestrating more than 1,000 sham marriages over more than a decade to help foreign nationals, primarily Chinese citizens, fraudulently obtain U.S. permanent residency, the Justice Department said.
Officials described the operation as one of the largest marriage fraud schemes ever prosecuted in the United States. Foreign nationals paid facilitators as much as $100,000 for a sham marriage and help obtaining a green card, according to the indictment, while participating U.S. citizens were paid up to $30,000, typically in installments tied to milestones in the application process.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said the operation amounted to a long running, highly organized effort to help people illegally obtain U.S. citizenship status. Accounts differed on the scale of money involved, with the unsealed indictment describing a multimillion dollar scheme while Blanche, in separate remarks to reporters, described it as a multibillion dollar cottage industry, a discrepancy that had not been clarified as of Wednesday.
What We Know So Far
According to the indictment, the network operated from at least 2016 through July 2026, arranging sham marriages between foreign nationals and U.S. citizens across multiple states, including Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and Florida, as well as in Vanuatu and China, though it was based principally in New York City.
The scheme relied on a layered structure, according to prosecutors: facilitators who oversaw the operation and identified foreign national customers, recruiters who found willing U.S. citizens and ensured their continued participation, and assistants who prepared immigration paperwork and coordinated submission of fraudulent green card applications to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Marriage officiants, attorneys, tax preparers and insurance providers also allegedly supported the scheme. Recruiters were paid commissions of up to about $5,000 for each U.S. citizen they brought into the scheme.
Prosecutors said the defendants paired foreign nationals with U.S. citizens who often met for the first time immediately before obtaining a marriage license, followed by staged wedding ceremonies and photographs designed to make the marriages appear genuine. After the ceremonies, participants allegedly manufactured further evidence of legitimacy, including staged family photographs, joint financial and utility accounts, joint tax filings and shared insurance policies. When USCIS interviews were required, participants were coached on how to conceal the true nature of their relationships and provide false answers to immigration officers, according to the indictment.
The 11 defendants named in the indictment are Amy Cheng, also known as Amy Zhou, 72, of Brooklyn; Xiao Mei Chan, also known as Carmen, 64, of Queens; Christine Lu, also known as Lily, 52, of Queens; Jing Yan Ye, also known as Serene, 43, of Staten Island; Xiao Yan Chen, also known as Anna, 48, of Brooklyn; Gang Zheng, also known as Michael or Mike, 61, of Queens; Anthony Cheng, 47, of Staten Island; Michelle Duenas, 35, of Staten Island; Angela Duenas, 26, of Staten Island; Sigrid Cetino, 32, of Peekskill, New York; and Erika Johnson, 43, of Ossining, New York.
The defendants were arrested Wednesday morning and were expected to be arraigned the same day. Law enforcement executed search warrants at multiple locations in New York, including in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and Flushing, Queens. It was not immediately clear whether the defendants had retained attorneys to speak on their behalf.
Each defendant faces one count of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and immigration fraud, carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and one count of conspiracy to encourage the unlawful residence of noncitizens in the United States, carrying a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Prosecutors said the scheme is believed to have generated tens of millions of dollars from foreign nationals seeking permanent resident status.
What Authorities Are Saying
Blanche said the schemes carry real costs, undermining the country’s ability to control who is and is not allowed to become a citizen.
U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald for the Southern District of New York said the operation functioned as a nationwide and international, multimillion dollar marriage fraud enterprise built to exploit immigration law for profit, adding that Wednesday’s arrests dismantled a central part of one of the largest such schemes charged in U.S. history.
USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said anyone willing to lie or cheat their way to legal status poses a direct threat to national security, and that the agency is aggressively pursuing marriage fraud networks and their leaders.
Homeland Security Investigations Acting Executive Associate Director John Condon said the decade long scheme had effectively turned marriage fraud into an international business model, resulting in hundreds of fraudulent green card applications submitted to federal immigration authorities.
Why This Matters
The case represents one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in U.S. history by scale, both in the number of sham marriages allegedly arranged and the length of time the network is accused of operating. Its reach across multiple U.S. states and into China and Vanuatu illustrates how such schemes can extend well beyond a single local operation into an organized, transnational enterprise involving dozens of participants beyond the core group of defendants, including hundreds of recruited U.S. citizens.
The prosecution arrives amid the Trump administration’s broader push to tighten restrictions on both legal and illegal immigration, positioning this case as a high profile example of the administration’s stated commitment to rooting out fraud within the legal immigration system specifically, rather than focusing solely on unauthorized border crossings.
The scale of financial exchange described in the indictment, with foreign nationals paying up to $100,000 each and total proceeds estimated in the tens of millions of dollars, underscores the significant demand and profit incentive driving this kind of fraud, even as legitimate pathways to permanent residency remain available through standard immigration channels.
What Happens Next
The 11 defendants are expected to appear in court following their arraignment, with the criminal case proceeding through the Southern District of New York. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jake Sidransky and Reyhan Watson are prosecuting the case, which remains under investigation by Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI’s Safe Streets Task Force, USCIS’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division and the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office.
As with any indictment, the charges represent accusations only, and all defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. Given the scale of the alleged scheme, additional arrests or charges against other participants, including recruited citizens or additional facilitators, remain possible as the investigation continues.
Reporting drawn from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Associated Press
