Miguel Angel Ortiz
Posted on 09/05/2007 11:38:01 PM PDT by csvset
After fleeing poverty in his native Uruguay, Miguel Angel Ortiz settled in Hampton Roads and established himself as an expert welder. He formed his own business and obtained shipyard contracts worth more than $1 million.
Married with three children, the youngest about 10 months old, he had been living in a stately waterfront home in Virginia Beach. Two full-size bronze lions were perched out front near a four-tier fountain. He drove a Hummer and had a spare in the driveway.
Ortiz built this life using someone else’s identity and after racking up an extensive arrest record in this country.
His case raises new questions about how an illegal immigrant who served jail time had not only remained in the country undetected but built a corporation and amassed wealth.
Through interviews and court records, including Ortiz’s confession, The Virginian-Pilot uncovered the life of a man who exploited loopholes in the immigration system and skirted detection – until this year.
Ortiz was arrested in April after he applied to have his passport renewed under the name Alfredo Rivera Jr. The State Department began investigating after determining that the picture on the passport did not match the picture of Rivera in the agency’s files. Ortiz’s life has since unraveled.
After pleading guilty in May to identity theft charges, Ortiz was sentenced Aug. 20 in Norfolk’s U.S. District Court to 27 months in prison. Upon release, he will be processed for deportation.
Ortiz, 41, first arrived in the United States from Uruguay in 1987. He left and returned, illegally, in 1992.
To remain in the country, Ortiz bought a birth certificate and Social Security card in 1996 for $8,000 in New York, according to court records. Ortiz assumed the identity of Alfredo Rivera Jr., the name on the documents. At the time, the real Rivera was living in New York. It’s unclear from the records whether the two men know each other or whether Rivera ever found out his identity was stolen. He could not be located.
Ortiz obtained a passport in Rivera’s name and moved to Virginia Beach, where he began dating Gloria Hill, who comes from a family of Ford plant workers.
His first brush with the law came in 1998 when Virginia Beach police arrested him on a car-theft charge. The case eventually was dropped. A check of his fingerprints never revealed his true identity.
Ortiz and Hill moved to Florida, where they married in 1999. Ortiz listed his true identity on the marriage license, but he never used the marriage to try and get U.S. citizenship.
But there were troubles in the marriage. Ortiz was arrested three times on domestic violence and child abuse charges. In a 2000 case, he was accused of trying to kick his pregnant wife and threatening to kill her. The case was later dropped, but he was arrested again the following year on charges of beating his 5-month-old daughter. He was convicted of that charge, but it is unclear from court records whether he served time.
In 2002, his wife called police again to report that her husband had punched, choked and scratched her. Ortiz fled the scene and led police on a chase. On arrest reports, sheriff’s deputies noted that Ortiz had a distinctive tattoo on his chest that read, “Property of God.”
In all of the Florida arrests, Ortiz used his true identity. But it wasn’t until at least his fourth arrest that immigration authorities stepped in. In August 2003, after serving six months in jail in the 2002 domestic violence case, Ortiz was deported to Uruguay.
About six months later, Ortiz sneaked back into the United States and reunited with his family, who had moved back to Virginia Beach. He reverted to his old identity: Alfredo Rivera Jr.
A trained welder, Ortiz quickly found work at local shipyards. But in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, security had been tightened and the yards were requiring background checks on its employees.
Ortiz found a way around that: In 2004, he started his own business, Virginia Welding and Fabrication Inc., and walked into Colonna’s Shipyard looking for contract work.
Steven Walker, Colonna’s vice president for operations, remembered Ortiz, or Rivera as he knew him, as a hard worker. The company hired him as a subcontractor for various jobs repairing tugboats, barges, fishing boats and other vessels. Ortiz had his own crew.
Shipyards are required to check employees’ Social Security numbers through a federal database. As a subcontractor, Ortiz was required to conduct background checks on his own employees and file the paperwork with Colonna’s. Walker said all he’s required to do is keep the paperwork on file.
“My impression of Miguel, or Alfredo, was that he was one of those guys that if you had a problem at midnight he was there,” Walker said. “There was nothing from a personal or a business perspective that I ever had a problem with Alfredo.”
He continued, “He was very friendly, very outgoing. I’ve never in my time of knowing him had one of his employees complain. I thought Alfredo, as I knew him, was an American success story.”
Ortiz planned carefully to keep his true identity a secret. In his business incorporation papers, he listed his wife as president. His own name doesn’t appear.
The State Corporation Commission terminated the company’s incorporation in January 2006 for not filing an annual report. Yet the company continued operating. State records show Ortiz started a second company that year, called Alfredo & Guys Welding and Ship Repair.
Ken Schrad, commission director, said that even if Ortiz had registered the company in his own name, there’s no requirement that the commission check citizenship status.
“There’s no law that says you have to be a citizen of the U.S. or a resident of Virginia to incorporate in Virginia,” he said.
Sen. Kenneth Stolle, R-Virginia Beach, said passing such a law would be “problematic” because the state wants to encourage foreign investors.
Localities, on the other hand, are required to ask a business license applicant to prove citizenship and can deny a license to anyone who can’t, according to Attorney General Bob McDonnell.
Chief Deputy Eric Schmudde of the Virginia Beach Commissioner of the Revenue said nothing can be done by his office about cases such as Ortiz, who licensed his businesses in his wife’s name and previously in the name of an associate. Both are U.S. citizens.
Ortiz’s companies had Virginia Beach business licenses in 2005 and 2006.
Gloria Ortiz did not return messages and her lawyer, James Broccoletti, declined to comment.
Over the past several years, Miguel Ortiz obtained more than $1 million in shipyard contracts and paid himself more than $100,000 a year in salary, according to federal prosecutors.
In addition to their two 2006 Hummers, Ortiz and his wife obtained a 2007 Harley-Davidson, a 2006 van, a 2005 Ford pickup and a 2007 Mercedes, which alone cost about $87,000 new. The government has since seized the vehicles and will sell them at auction.
The couple also obtained a mortgage for their home, which they purchased in 2005 for $675,000, and have been making $4,000 monthly mortgage payments. The home in the Wesleyan area abuts Lake Lawson and the Cypress Point Country Club.
Ortiz also traveled extensively, yet his identification was never questioned at airports. He had obtained a passport in 1996 under Rivera’s name, but with his own photograph on it.
Last September, the State Department noticed that the original passport photo for Rivera did not match the photo Ortiz submitted.
Later, the department ran fingerprint records of Rivera, which revealed a match for both names. Further investigation uncovered Ortiz’s hidden life, according to court records.
On April 18, Ortiz’s wife called Virginia Beach police to report that her husband had attacked her. She declined to press charges, but told police her husband was in the country illegally, using someone else’s name.
By then, federal authorities were ready to arrest Ortiz, which they did on April 27. He confessed and has been in jail since then. He pleaded guilty to aggravated identity theft and falsifying a passport application.
At Ortiz’s sentencing last month, a federal prosecutor detailed Ortiz’s litany of deceit and asked for the maximum punishment under federal guidelines.
“He is someone who is intelligent, he’s hardworking, he’s resourceful and he’s determined,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Krask told the judge. “Those normally are good adjectives to say about someone.
“But I think in adjudging Mr. Ortiz’s potential to commit this crime again,’’ he continued, Ortiz “presents a strong likelihood that he’s going to try and come into the United States after he’s done with this court.”
Groups seeking better enforcement of immigration laws said that the Ortiz case is indicative of the need for an improved identification system – one that relies on fingerprints or DNA.
“It’s really going to be the only way we’re going to” stop illegal immigrants like Ortiz, said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Still, he called it “odd” that Ortiz was not captured sooner, given all the run-ins with law enforcement and his numerous business filings.
“It sounds like he was quite an entrepreneur,” he said.
Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com
$100,000 a year does not buy 2 hummers, a Harley, a van, a pick-up, and a $575,000 home.
This guy was doing something else on the side, or the statistics stated in this news story really imply a lot more than $100,000 per year.
*correction: $675,000 home. And a Mercedes.
It does if those are “business expenses.”
There Ha$ to be a lot more to thi$ $tory.
ping
Miguel Angel Ortiz ..... a real go getter. I almost like the guy. But he’s committed many crimes here and should serve time and be deported for good and forever
I have to wonder if he provided shelter or jobs for other illegals in my area.
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