| By JENNIFER PELTZ (AP)NEW YORK — A convicted bigamist posing as a veteran immigration lawyer scammed thousands of dollars from Guyanese immigrants and gave them advice so bad that they now face deportation, prosecutors said Thursday.Wilmer Rivera Melendez promised green cards but pursued avenues that would never yield them, changed his phone number to evade his “clients” when they started asking questions and even startled some by proposing they marry him in order to get legal residency, prosecutors said.Melendez, 60, denied the allegations, which add to a series of far-flung and colorful brushes with the law. Records show he was imprisoned for bigamy in Georgia; prosecutors said he also was convicted in an office burglary in the U.S. Virgin Islands and broke out of an Ohio jail through a ceiling hole in 1971.Although the charges in Melendez’s latest case are limited to New York,Pat Tillman Cardinals Jersey, prosecutors said he set up a scheme that stretched from his home in Covington, Ga., to several states.“He just messed me up,” said Derick Darnley, a 37-year-old Guyanese boat-maintenance worker who said he asked Melendez to get a valid visa extended and ended up with a potential deportation case — after spending about $1,800.Claiming to be a lawyer with 20 years of immigration-related experience in federal agencies, the Puerto Rico-born Melendez promised to get green cards for at least 14 Guyanese immigrants in Brooklyn, prosecutors said.They and others paid at least $75,000 for misguided efforts that ended up spurring deportation proceedings for some,Wholesale Soccer Jerseys, according to prosecutors and immigration lawyer Sheldon Zelig, who alerted prosecutors to the cases.Prosecutors said many of the immigrants were in the country illegally, but immigration authorities didn’t know until Melendez started filing paperwork for them.Darnley said he came to the U.S. in 2008 on a monthlong work visa for a charter-yacht job. It fell through, so he sought to get the visa extended for six months to find another job.Melendez said he’d arrange it but then steered him into applying for the unlikely prospect of asylum — designed for people fleeing persecution — and set off a process that may end in deportation,cheap nfl jerseys outlet, Darnley said.“I thought I was doing the right thing because I don’t want to be here illegally,” said Darnley, who is from Guyana’s southeastern Berbice region. “I just feel very betrayed.”For some New York “clients,Air Max Pas Chere Femme,” Melendez had another solution, prosecutors said: a green-card marriage to him. None accepted — in fact, “they were disgusted,” assistant district attorney Benjamin Cheeks said.Melendez was being held on $175,000 bail after pleading not guilty to charges including grand larceny, scheme to defraud and falsely appearing as an attorney.Defence lawyer, Russell Paisley, said that Melendez never claimed to be an attorney but simply helped people with immigration papers.“He did not promise them anything,” Paisley said.Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no immediate information Thursday on the status of any of the people Melendez is alleged to have victimized.Manhattan prosecutors said they found Melendez had other “clients” in California,NFL Jerseys China, Florida, Georgia,Cheap NFL Jerseys, Maryland and North Carolina. It wasn’t immediately clear whether authorities planned to pursue cases there.Melendez was released from prison in 2006 after serving nearly two years for bigamy,Wholesale Football Jerseys, Georgia Department of Corrections records show. He was married to at least three women at once, Cheeks said.The top charges against Melendez carry up to four years in prison. |
