A Department of Homeland Security supervisor is expected to plead guilty today nearly two months after he was indicted on charges that he took millions in bribes to sell phony visas and citizenships to illegal aliens.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ Robert T. Schofield, 57, was arrested and charged with taking more than $8.1 million in bribes to sell phony green cards. A clerk for U.S. District Court Judge James Cacheris in Alexandria said Wednesday that a plea hearing was scheduled for today. The clerk said he was not allowed to be identified. Schofield’s alleged accomplice, Qiming Ye, of Washington, D.C., a Chinese citizen who federal authorities say acted as Schofield’s broker, pleaded guilty in October.
Schofield’s lawyer did not return phone calls Wednesday.
It’s not clear if the plea brings to an end the investigation: Federal officials have told The Examiner they are tracking down hundreds of immigrants who allegedly bought the phony documents.
Immigration experts say the Schofield case shows how five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, the agency charged with screening foreign visitors remains deeply flawed. Before he was arrested at his Fairfax office last summer, the government had investigated Schofield over the previous decade for numerous allegations that he was taking bribes, according to charging documents.
In 1991, Schofield, then an INS special agent, botched an investigation of an Asian brothel in Washington after he allegedly had an affair with a prostitute who had been working as an informant, according to court documents and former immigration officials.
After he was demoted, Schofield fled to East Asia, where he spent more than $36,000 on two government credit cards, court documents said. Schofield was coaxed back to Washington and was able to keep his job as an immigration application examiner, former colleagues said. Schofield rose through the ranks until he became a supervisor in charge of approving citizenship.
Authorities say that over a five-year period, 200 immigrants each paid up to $50,000 for the fake documents. The money most likely was paid by human smuggling rings or foreign intelligence operations, immigration security experts said.
