Immigrants striving toward citizenship often make an easy mark for the scam artist intent on taking advantage of their vulnerabilities in a new country.
Advocates say that unfamiliar areas such as language, culture and a complex legal system can cause immigrants to seek assistance from – and fall prey to – someone falsely offering help in navigating the bureaucracy.
That’s what happened to Noa Ward, a 41-year-old El Salvador native intent on becoming a permanent resident after 18 years of work permits. She said she worried about making a mistake on critical legal documents, errors that would “sit you right back at the beginning of a very long process.”
As her husband, Kyle Ward, a native of Guatemala, was already an American citizen, Noa thought it wise to retain an attorney.
“If you get a lawyer, then you have someone who can read it properly and be sure that everything is right,” Noa Ward said.
Turning to the Denver office of the Guatemalan consulate, the Wards were introduced to Miguel “Mike” Puentes, who said he could help them. Puentes had befriended officials at the consulate, and they agreed he could help their citizens with immigration matters.
Puentes turned out to be little more than a smooth-talking Cuban who was no lawyer at all.
“I thought, ‘Wow! He must be some attorney, working at the consulate,”‘ Noa Ward recalled. “For that reason I was completely sure he was an attorney. But they didn’t know either. We were all taken in.”
Puentes is one of two individuals Denver prosecutors recently convicted for portraying themselves as lawyers who could help immigrants obtain a variety of important documents legally – citizenship, green cards and work visas among them – but for fees that ran into the thousands of dollars.
In Noa Ward’s case, it eventually cost her work permits because Puentes told her not to file for a new one and that the residency application he filed for her would take care of that.
The application never went further than Puentes’ desk, court papers show.
“They canceled my employee permit and said it was under investigation,” Ward said of U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. “And here I am, unemployed for the last 18 months, and my husband can’t pay it all on his job.”
The scam has forced the family to move from a three-bedroom apartment to a much smaller, cheaper, one-bedroom flat.
“He was pretty convincing,” said Eddy Garrido, a Denver insurance agent who allowed Puentes to use his westside office to see clients. “He actually said he worked in the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador. He told some stories so incredible you had to believe him.”
Puentes roamed into Denver from Sioux Falls, S.D., where he ran the Hispanic Services Center and was told in 2004 by that state’s bar association to stop saying he was an immigration lawyer.
He also was editor of a start-up weekly Spanish-language newspaper. South Dakota consumer protection officials said they never investigated Puentes, though they recently trumpeted his agreement to shut down the center following his Denver arrest.
Though Puentes vehemently denied in court that he ever posed as a lawyer, a Denver jury convicted him in June on felony theft and criminal impersonation charges. He is scheduled for sentencing on Aug. 7.
A week after that, a Denver judge will sentence Cynthia Contreras after her conviction on identical charges for scamming immigrants into paying her for work visas. Like Puentes, Contreras was no lawyer, either.
Contreras charged people thousands of dollars, court records show, and frequently ignored immigrants’ complaints when no paperwork materialized after several months.
“The most concerning thing is these victims are a very vulnerable, easy-mark population,” said Joseph Morales, the Denver prosecutor who tried both cases. “They can’t complain with any easy availability or accessibility.”
Because of the cultural differences and difficulty with the language, immigrants may quickly trust someone to help them. Then, once scammed, they are afraid to come forward, Morales said.
“It’s dangerous for them, and all they want to be is a citizen,” he said. “They’ll earn their money back, but taking their hope and desires, that’s the hardest part.”
There are several ways immigrants can be sure they’re paying for proper services, according to Nancy Elkind, a Denver-based immigration lawyer who is a member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
“We often see the cases that have to be cleaned up and sometimes they can’t be,” Elkind said. “Some can end up in deportation proceedings and it’s hard to undo that.”
First, Elkind recommends checking whether a lawyer is actually licensed to practice law. Do that by checking with the Colorado Supreme Court, either by calling 303-866-6554 or visiting and clicking on the link for “attorney search.”
Next, listen carefully to any promises made or buzz-words indicating a scam.
“If someone’s been here illegally for a while and they’re told by someone not to worry, that they can fix their papers, they should be suspicious because it’s not that easy to do,” Elkind said.
The biggest sign of a fraud, Elkind said, is someone indicating that their personal connections will bypass delays normally encountered in the application process.
“People are from countries where that kind of thing is done,” she said. “I can make things run more smoothly, but not any quicker, with someone doing me a favor. They should head in the other direction if the lawyer says they know someone on the inside.”
Staff writer David Migoya can be reached at 303-954-1506 or dmigoya@denverpost.com.
