A Bronx lawyer and his son were arrested on Monday and charged with orchestrating a seven-year immigration scheme that defrauded hundreds of immigrants and caused some of them to be deported, federal prosecutors said.
The lawyer, Kofi Amankwaa, 69, and his son, Kofi Amankwaa Jr., 37, advised clients seeking green cards to sign petitions under the Violence Against Women Act, which enables undocumented immigrants who are victims of abuse to gain lawful permanent residence in the United States, prosecutors said.
The petitions falsely claimed that the clients were being abused by their children, who were American citizens. The abuse claims were then used as reason for requesting permission for the clients to travel abroad, which, when granted, was used to help them apply for green cards, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, who brought the charges.
The Amankwaas either knew the clients had not been abused or never asked whether they had been, the U.S. attorney, Damian Williams, said in a news release. The applications for legal residency were often found to be fraudulent and denied, and some of the Amankwaas’ clients were deported. Their services cost as much as $6,000, plus administrative fees, the complaint said.
Each of the two men was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and one count of conspiracy to commit immigration fraud. They were expected to be arraigned on Monday, and they face a maximum of 10 years in prison. The men “sought to make a mockery of the U.S. immigration system,” said Mr. Williams, whose office conducted the investigation with the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition to the charges, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, sued the Amankwaas and three other members of their practice, Sylvester Boateng, Nana Adoma Kontoh and Betty Smith, for their roles in the immigration fraud, according to a news release from Ms. James’s office. Ms. Kontoh, according to the release, had falsely told clients she was a lawyer.
“People who immigrate to America are often vulnerable and simply trying to build better lives for themselves and their loved ones,” Ms. James said in the release. “When these immigrants sought help from attorneys claiming to act in their best interests, they were taken advantage of and harmed instead.”
Ms. James is seeking full restitution and an unspecified amount in damages to be paid to the affected clients, in addition to civil penalties.
The case was the latest in a series of fraud schemes that have taken advantage of those seeking lawful citizenship in New York. On Jan. 11, the Manhattan attorney general, Alvin L. Bragg, brought several charges against Pablo Israel Ortega Cuenca for posing as an immigration lawyer and collecting thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Mr. Amankwaa had been licensed to practice law in New York since 1996, but his license was suspended in November after a state Attorney Grievance Committee, which handles reports of lawyer misconduct, received nine complaints from clients or their family members between October 2022 and May 2023, according to committee records. The younger Mr. Amankwaa provided legal advice to the clients even though he was not licensed to practice law in New York, prosecutors said.
One of Mr. Amankwaa’s clients, Ricardo Velazquez, a father of four living in the Bronx, had been in the United States for more than 20 years. Mr. Amankwaa filed documents claiming that Mr. Velazquez had been abused by his son and advised Mr. Velazquez to leave the country and re-enter in order to continue his green card application. When Mr. Velazquez tried to return from Mexico, he was detained and eventually deported.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law at Cornell Law School, said he had never heard of someone using the Violence Against Women Act to conduct immigration fraud. But such fraud can be hard to root out, he added, because victims often don’t recognize it or decide not to report it.
“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is,” he said. “If someone says ‘I can guarantee you a green card if you just sign here,’ that’s a sure sign that something is funny.”
Catalina Cruz, a state assemblywoman who was once undocumented, described the Amankwaas’ actions as “unethical and unconscionable.”
“These families simply wanted the American dream and trusted Mr. Amankwaa as their lawyer,” she said. “Instead, he committed the most depraved of violations and his actions led to forced separation from their families.”