'In deep': Seattle area man sentenced for stealing $70K-plus in green card scam

The new year has brought a sense of justice for three undocumented immigrant couples who were collectively defrauded of more than $70,000 by a man who said he would help them gain legal status. He took their money and never delivered, and is now serving time in state prison.

Somewhere in the state of Michoacan, Mexico, there’s a tombstone of a child who was born in Washington state. She’s buried next to her grandpa. Aunts, uncles, and cousins stop by to visit their graves on occasion.

The child’s name was Kayla, and her parents, Flavia and Christopher, are still working on getting the papers they’d need to visit her grave — and be able to return to the U.S.

“Late, but one day I’m going to see her,” Flavia said in Spanish. “One day I’ll go and tell her I’m sorry that I couldn’t wait for her.”

Flavia and Christopher, who KUOW agreed to only identify by first name given their immigration status, thought they’d already overcome one major hurdle to doing so: In 2015, they became two of six people who paid a man named Ricardo Mejia under the promise he’d help them secure residency status in the U.S.

Lea esta historia en español: Condenado residente del área de Seattle por robar más de $70 mil dólares en una estafa relacionada con tarjetas de residencia

That never happened, and Mejia took their passports and private documents amid his scheme.

Court documents show Mejia also took a total of $73,040 from Flavia and Christopher, and two other couples over the span of two years, much of it cash. Immigration experts say this should have been a red flag: At the lower end, immigration cases typically cost around $5,000 per person; the most expensive and complicated cases cost around $10,000.

Mejia’s victims make modest incomes. The men all work blue collar jobs, which means those tens of thousands of dollars took big bites out of their bank accounts. The couples joke about their misfortune, but they don’t want to be seen as fools by their peers.

Mejia seemed so legit, Christopher said. He came to the couples with business cards and said he knew immigration lawyers in California. He even asked them to submit to FBI background checks and receive medical exams. He had them pay fees for an interpreter they never saw.

What he didn’t come to them with was a written contract for these services, signed by a lawyer — a red flag they say they didn’t recognize at the time.

Eliseo and his wife, Evelin, are among the people Mejia scammed. KUOW has also agreed to refer to them only by first name due to immigration concerns.

Eliseo said Mejia knew things about his wife’s immigration status they thought only lawyers should know, which added to his perceived credibility.

“We were already in deep, but when he would say something, I would ask my wife if it was true, and she said it was,” Eliseo said in Spanish.

“It’s because of that we clung to the idea that his lawyers were involved,” he added.

Court documents show Mejia’s victims took a trip to California, where everything was supposed to be settled — except nobody got their papers.

That’s when Evelin got suspicious. She began digging up old texts and voice messages with Mejia and keeping a paper trail of their transactions — which had previously been made in cash — and suggested others start doing the same.

“Ask for receipts, proof — whatever it is — so when the time comes … [you] have something,” Evelin said in Spanish.

“Because for us everything was so legit, we felt confident,” she added. “And at the end, we were barely able to secure the proof we needed because we thought it was all a given.”

For her part, Flavia wanted to ferry her daughter to her final resting place. But because Kayla was an organ donor, Flavia got caught up with a lot of paperwork, which meant she needed to send her daughter’s body to Michoacan ahead of her.

Around the same time, she said Mejia pressured her and Christopher to leave the U.S., saying they were good to go: If they gave him money and their passports — something he’d asked the others for as well — he’d mail them the documents they’d need to reenter the U.S. while they were in Mexico. (In reality, they should have gotten visas before they left the U.S.)

But before they could leave, they got another call from Mejia.

He said he’d been arrested while delivering their Mexican passports to a law firm in California, and said they’d need to retrieve the documents from the police, who didn’t actually have them.

The couples first reported their missing passports to the Auburn Police Department, but were written off. Officers thought the couples got burned while trying to buy fake immigration papers.

“Which, of course, was not at all the case,” said Chris Fyall, a King County prosecuting attorney. “They thought they were doing the right thing.”

The couples then turned to the Kent Police Department, which launched an investigation into Mejia’s scheme. On Jan. 12, Mejia was sentenced to 18 months in prison for theft; he is not expected to pay that money back because the court determined he doesn't have the means. His lawyer has appealed the case.

“Your case is not like the cases that we usually see because people aren't as brave as you,” Fyall told the couples through an interpreter before Mejia’s sentencing hearing.

Stories like theirs aren’t uncommon, Fyall said. What’s unusual is they were able to get justice.

Recently, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project wasn't able to move forward with a case because the victim didn't have the level of documentation Mejia’s victims were able to provide, said Vanessa Gutierrez, the project’s deputy director.

“It's rare that our clients want to move forward, even with a complaint with the Attorney General's Office, because they have that fear of retaliation or that somehow it's going to impact their immigration case,” Gutierrez said.

The Keep Washington Working Act, passed in 2019, protects undocumented immigrants in the state against deportation on the basis of immigration status alone. Gutierrez said people can sometimes secure residency through a U visa, especially if they’ve been the victim of a violent crime. But that’s not the only way.

People looking for residency can also apply for asylum, or they can submit a family petition, which is the most common approach, Guiterrez said. Typically, the petitioner is an adult over the age of 21 who has residency or citizenship and wishes to sponsor a parent. Gutierrez recommends getting help from a licensed attorney, to avoid errors that could disrupt the application process.

“Every single case, there's always something different about it and you need to make sure that we're doing a thorough job of advising people,” Guiterrez said.

“There are so many hurdles and so many complexities to the system,” she added. “It's pretty broken and not accessible for a lot of immigrant communities. It puts people in a vulnerable position where they’re willing to take risks.”

The couples who fell victims to Mejia’s fraud are now working to get their green cards. If things go well for Flavia and Christopher, they might be able to visit their daughter in Michoacan without sacrificing their livelihoods here.