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Kennesaw pastor convicted of scamming immigrants
More articles on this topic: Emma GeraldKennesaw pastor Emma Gerald told immigrants she had a vision from God that she should help them.
The government said her help violated federal law and she was found guilty Thursday for her part in a profitable multi-state scheme to encourage illegal immigrants to file untruthful visa applications.
Gerald, 56, ran a small local church and conducted her scam in immigrant churches around the country.
She was convincing when she told illegal Brazilian immigrants they could stay in the United States legally.
“Amnesty means all is forgiven,” she told congregants at a Brazilian church in Marietta two years ago.
Few or none of the immigrants met the requirements for the visas. They paid Gerald for help filing applications anyway.
After the verdict, assistant United States Attorney Jon-Peter Kelly said, “She preyed upon their glimmer of hope that they could stay in the country.”
Gerald netted at least $465,000 in less than a year, mostly in 2005, by processing more than 1,000 visa applications at a cost of $300 to $600 each, prosecutors say.
“It was a money-making machine that was passed off as trying to help fellow Christians,” Kelly said.
Gerald held her head in her hands as the U.S. District Court clerk read the guilty verdicts on several counts including conspiracy to encourage illegal immigrants to reside in the U.S., making false statements to the Department of Homeland Security and money laundering. She likely faces eight or nine years in jail, according to sentencing guidelines. The maximum allowed by law is 45 years. Sentencing will be Feb. 26.
Also found guilty of conspiracy were Gerald’s son, Douglas Ross, 30; Hudson Araujo, 28, who helped set up meetings in Massachusetts; and Brazilian Pastor Ruy Brasil Silva, 46, who introduced Gerald to his Bethel Christian Church congregation in Marietta.
Silva was also found guilty of making false statements to the government.
Many meetings were held at his Marietta church. Gerald and her associates held visa application meetings with other immigrant congregations in Boca Raton, Fla., Brockton, Mass. and the San Francisco Bay area, prosecutors say.
Silva conducted meetings in Florida where prosecutors say several hundred applications were filed. He got $100 per application and made about $20,000 on one trip, prosecutors say. Plus he got a $4,000 payment from Gerald, they say.
Silva faces a maximum sentence of 15 years and deportation. He has been in jail two years waiting for trial.
“I think it’ll be a …shame if he spends more time in the U.S. prison system,” his attorney Tom Clegg said. “He’s going to be deported anyway. He belongs back in Brazil where he can be with his family.”
Many of the immigrants knew they didn’t qualify to stay here, but paid for help with visa applications because Gerald told them the government had no way of verifying whether they really met the requirements, witnesses said.
“Because she was a pastor, and the majority of us are Christians, we all believed in her,” said witness Eduardo Correa of Coral Springs, who testified that he paid Gerald $1,100 for applications for himself and his wife.
“Some of the witnesses at some point actually believed it was OK to do this,” defense attorney David MacKusick said.
“She convinced some of them it was OK to do it, even though they knew they were lying,” he said.
A tape of Gerald speaking to a group at a Brazilian church in Marietta in September, 2005, was played in court. On it, Gerald gives orders to immigrants assembled at the church, hurrying them through the application process. She tells them to spread the word to their friends and repeats that she accepts only cash.
“Cash, cash, cash,” Gerald says. When a woman asks about whether her children should apply, Gerald’s answer focuses on payment. “Look, first you get the Benjamin Franklins.”
Gerald bought a $70,000 2006 silver Mercedes-Benz S500 and made a $133,000 down payment on a $500,000 house in Kennesaw, prosecutors said. Agents also seized $78,000 in cash from her house.
Teenaged members of Silva’s church who spoke Portuguese translated Gerald’s instructions for their congregation. They helped applicants fill out paperwork using an overhead projector and charged $30 to write boilerplate letters, they testified.
Church member Marcos Amador, 21, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy.
Amador testified in his orange jail suit that he was paid $400 a week to collect application money for Gerald and field e-mail questions about the visa program from prospective clients.
Amador filed a visa application for himself, hoping he would qualify to stay in the United States legally to study medicine.
Some of the first to apply did indeed receive visas and travel permits from the government, although undeservedly.
The visa paperwork Gerald pedaled to church members was filed under an extension of a 1986 amnesty program from the Reagan Administration. Part of the requirement was that applicants lived in the United States in the 1980s.
The government received 79,080 applications, but denied about 89 percent, a spokesman for U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said. All over the country, people were applying fraudulently, an ICE agent said.
Many immigrants in Cobb County asked that their applications be withdrawn after the government arrested the pastors.
The government has not prosecuted the immigrants for making false applications, but most have been placed in deportation proceedings, an ICE agent said.
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