One might say that immigration marriage fraud runs in the family. Or one might say that here is a new (to me, at least) motivation for a phony marriage. You would be right on both counts in this newly concluded case from Virginia Beach, Va.
Several people are seriously at fault in this case, but the principal villain is neither the U.S. citizen groom in the case nor his (phony) Belorussian spouse.
That distinction belongs to Danil Lyapin who, among many other things, is the son of the bride (Natallia Liapina) and same-sex lover of the groom, Armondo Figueroa, who married the bride to please his male lover (an unusual motivation for marriage fraud). Danil wound up arranging his mother's phony marriage, thus becoming the lover of his own stepfather.
Danil, a busy guy by all accounts, was also involved in three phony (opposite-sex) marriages of his own; none, apparently, successful in obtaining a green card for him.
Both mother and son are on the way to jail — for 21 and 41 months, respectively — unless their appeals to the Circuit Court are decided in their favor. After jail they are scheduled to go into the deportation process. The feds did not prosecute the four citizens (the one groom and Danil's three brides); they were all regarded as unindicted co-conspirators.
As is often the case in immigration marriage fraud, there were multiple instances of other violations, and other questionable behaviors, but, thankfully, no one was killed, something that has happened in other cases.
Danil arrived in the United States in the late summer of 1996 on a J-1 visa and before that visa expired he moved to an F-1 and later the school he was attending (College of Albemarle) took action to cancel his visa in 1999 for not attending classes. The next year he had the first of this three marriages and others followed in February 2006 and April 2007. Whether there were divorces or not was not mentioned in the indictment.
According to a news account, largely friendly to the mother, prosecutors said that "This defendant [Danil] was particularly hard on his spouses and his girlfriends who were smart enough not to marry him. This defendant made fraudulent filings [with USCIS] and set up at least fraudulent marriage with his mother."
I think the federal indictment — these are always put together by an investigator, usually with limited writing skills — probably meant "at least one fraudulent marriage for his mother".
Meanwhile, after the start of Danil's third marriage an attempt to get a green card out of his second marriage collapsed; so at this point both the college and USCIS (regarding the green card application) had done the right thing, but he was still in the country. By June 21, 2010, according to the indictment, he became (or became again) an illegal alien.
Earlier, in the fall of 2000, he met his first future wife at a "male entertainment establishment in Georgetown, Washington, DC", which, I assume, is legalese for a strip club. The next year, as the indictment continues, he met Figueroa, his future stepfather and lover, "at the exotic dance club where Danil Lyapin worked and the two began a romantic relationship."
Subsequently, Danil's name became associated with a restaurant, apparently one bought for him by his lover. That venture ended in bankruptcy.
During the same period Danil's mother, Natallia Liapina, secured a K-1 (nonimmigrant) visa as a fiancé of Figueroa, came to the United States, married Figueroa, got her green card, landed a job as high school teacher of Russian, and was well regarded in that position, according to the previously cited news story.
A truly innocent victim of all this is Natallia's teenage son, Ivan, whose legal presence in the United States relates to his mother's status; he may have to leave if she is deported.
Looking over this whole sorry record, both in the press accounts and in the extensive files in PACER, the electronic records archive of the U.S. courts, one cannot help but notice that the whole immigration-control system had numerous official brushes with both the mother and, particularly, the son, but nothing happened until the son's third wife, Victoria, found herself a woman scorned and blew the whistle.
That destroyed the whole complex structure of multiple illegalities.
For PACER users, the citation for the key document, the indictment of both mother and son, is at case 2:11-cr-00158-AWA-DEM, document 3. I am grateful to the website Matrimonial Verification for its collection of immigration marriage fraud news articles, including this one.
