The Spanish-speaking immigrants would log on for what they thought were mandatory court hearings and be greeted by a veneer of legitimacy, which included their lawyers, a robed judge and the American flag.
But the proceedings — and the immigration court itself — were a sham, federal prosecutors say. The judges, lawyers and U.S. officials were all fake, according to an indictment unsealed Friday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
The leaders of the scheme were Colombian citizens who were targeting immigrants, including those seeking political asylum, according to the prosecutors. No one involved in the ruse was a lawyer.
The defendants “undermined the integrity of our immigration system by impersonating judges, law enforcement officers, and lawyers,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
Three of the defendants, Daniela Alejandra Sanchez Ramirez, Jhoan Sebastian Sanchez Ramirez and Alexandra Patricia Sanchez Ramirez, were arrested on Friday as they boarded a flight to Colombia at Newark Liberty International Airport, prosecutors said. Alexandra Patricia Sanchez Ramirez, prosecutors said, recorded their earnings from the scheme and how much each person involved was entitled to keep.
A fourth defendant, Marlyn Yulitza Salazar Pineda, was arrested at a restaurant in New Jersey on Friday; a fifth was at large in Colombia. The four defendants in custody are scheduled to appear on Saturday in federal court in Brooklyn, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office.
For more than two years, prosecutors said, the scammers lured immigrants with pending cases to a fictitious firm, CM Bufete De Abogados Consultoria Migratoria, primarily by using Facebook.
They would charge the victims anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars for nonexistent services, taking in more than $100,000 in the course of the scheme, prosecutors said. In addition for legal counsel at the sham court appearances, the scammers also charged the victims for representation at fake asylum interviews, the indictment says.
The scheme caused an unspecified number of the victims to miss actual immigration court dates and resulted in at least one person being deported, according to prosecutors. The defendants sent threatening messages to one victim who realized they were being duped, demanding that they pay more money, prosecutors said.
Although the scheme outlined by prosecutors started before President Trump took office in early 2025, there is some indication that such scams have increased amid his ultra-aggressive immigration crackdown.
The American Bar Association has identified more than a dozen instances of people posing as immigration lawyers. Last year, the organization suggested that the Trump administration’s immigration agenda had created a market for such fraud.
In April 2025, the New York City Council held hearings about fraudulent schemes targeting immigrants in the city, with one asylum seeker testifying that he had been duped by scammers who he thought was his lawyer.
Immigration courts are overseen by the Justice Department and are part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch. Yet according to prosecutors, at least one of the fraudulent videoconference hearings mentioned in the indictment featured a seal for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Another red flag: The proceedings were conducted in Spanish, unlike actual U.S. immigration court proceedings, which are always conducted in English.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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