Trinis fleeced in New York scam

SEVERAL Trinidad and Tobago nationals were fleeced by two persons in an immigration scam in New York. A woman who ran a church in her Brooklyn home and the owner of an immigration services business in Harlem were indicted on Friday, charged with cheating as many as 50 people in a green-card scam with a religious twist. The report was carried in the New York Newsday.

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau charged that the pair, Ereline Simmons and Christopher Pendarvis, scammed Caribbean immigrants by promising to get them green cards through a special exemption available to religious workers. “We believe as many as 50, and perhaps even more people, may have been victimised,” Morgenthau said in a statement. Simmons, known as “Mother Bishop” to the congregants of her non-denominational church at 337 Winthrop Street in Brooklyn, allegedly referred people to Pendarvis’ Immigration Business Consultants at 278 West 117th Street in Manhattan, Morgenthau said. Pendarvis, for a fee ranging widely from $200 to $8,000, provided contracts in which he promised to file the paperwork needed to obtain green cards, which allow immigrants to work legally before they gain citizenship.

Pendarvis is alleged to have used Simmons’ church as the basis for claiming a religious worker exemption. Simmons’ church, which like Pendarvis’ business is no longer operating, was called Saint Barbara of Sardis. She generally charged $250 to $500 for “sponsoring” the applications, said the district attorney. The investigators also found that the pair did not file paperwork on any of their clients that would help them obtain green cards. Most of the victims were from Guyana, Jamaica, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago and St Lucia, Morgenthau said. Simmons and Pendarvis pleaded not guilty to the charges of scheming to defraud and grand larceny, both felonies punishable by up to seven years in prison total, and to a separate charge of grand larceny, which carries up to four years in prison.