A woman married 10 different men at the same time to facilitate their legal staying in the United States.
Liana Barrientos got married 10 times to get money out of immigration scams and presently she is still married to four of the men, one of which has been deported because he represented a threat for the United States.
The woman who is 39 years old, hasn’t been caught for almost 10 years, one of the reason could be the fact that whenever she got married to a new man, she would get the certificate from a different village or town in the New York region.
The moment the woman was put face to face with the Department of Homeland Security, she stated that she had never seen any of the men she was told about, the only exception being mister Keita, explained during the trial Jessica Lupo, assistant district attorney, adding that the truth was that, ever since 1999, she got married to nine of the men.
The so called husbands were men coming from different regions of the world like, Turkey, Pakistan, Georgia, Egypt, Bangladesh, the Czech Republic and Mali, stated reports from the office of the district’s attorney.
Barrientos, got divorced from several of the men at one point, but there was a period of time she appeared to be married with eight different men at the same time in the region of New York.
The incredible case which has been brought to surface by the Department of Homeland Security, the woman pleaded not guilty to the accusations under which she falsely applied and got a license for the marriage she had in 2010 to Salle Keita, who was an immigrant from Mali.
The evidence the attorney used in court, was the one gathered from the case of Vakhtang Dzneladze,an immigrant from Georgia who got married to the woman in 2002.
It appears that Liana Barrientos had given the Georgian man pictures and other type of papers and in exchange of it she received an amount of money.They got married on the 24th of May in 2002.
After a few years, the man used his marriage to Barrientos to obtain legal residency in the United States and permanent citizenship.
In 2006, Barrientos and the man, got a divorce. Out of the 10 men Barrientos married, seven out of them filled for legal American residency. Some of these men were rejected, even if they were married to an American citizen and because of this they divorced Barrientos and later on they reapplied using marriages with different women.
The woman has been charged only for one of her marriages, the one that was licensed in Bronx, but she was also married in other suburban regions like, Hempstead, Huntington, Rye, Eastchester, Yonkers, Ramapo, Greenburgh, White Plains and Mamaroneck, and of course, Bronx. Apart from the one who got a license in Bronx, the rest of the marriages happened in the period between 1999 and 2002.
The Georgian man, until now, hasn’t received a legal residency status and he is not the only one in this situation. Other fake husbands of the woman, Rashid Rajput originating from Pakistan, got married to Barrientos also in 2002, but he has been deported in 2006 after a terrorism investigation, when he was considered to represent a threat for the United States.
If found guilty Liana Barrientos might be sentenced to years of prison but for the moment she hasn’t been detained, and was released without bail and her next court meeting has been set for the 18th of May.
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