Free Republic

BANGOR, Maine — A Newport woman was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to three months in federal prison for her part in a marriage scam that enlisted Maine residents to wed immigrants. June White recruited others to marry immigrants, including the man who is now her husband. The family was part of a conspiracy federal prosecutors claimed was run by two African men. Rashid Kakande, 37, of Woburn, Mass., who was convicted by a jury. Kakande, originally from Uganda, is being held without bail while awaiting sentencing. A second man, James Mbugua (pronounced umm-BOOG-wa), was indicted in July 2010...

LOS ANGELES, Sept. 4 (UPI) -- Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have declined to say if they will retry Mexican actress Fernanda Romero on charges of a sham marriage to an American. A mistrial was declared Friday in Romero's trial on charges she paid musician Kent Ross to become her legal hubby in 2005 so she could secure a U.S. work visa. The jury said late this week it was deadlocked by one holdout juror and could not reach a unanimous verdict. U.S. District Judge Manuel Real set a January hearing on a possible second trial and compared the case...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Six U.S. Navy crew members looking for quick and profitable marriages to illegal aliens face federal charges after being among 10 people caught in an FBI sting operation targeting the sham unions, prosecutors said. The six, assigned to the U.S.S. Eisenhower in Norfolk, Va., were nabbed after the FBI learned that a Baltimore man, Kenneth Adam Howard, 26, was recruiting men and women to enter sham marriages in New York, according to a complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Howard, who was among those charged with conspiracy, offered to provide people to marry illegal aliens...