Jose Oscar Melendez had a pretty good immigration scam going before passport authorities noticed an unusual number of applicants claiming to be born in the same place. Melendez, 40, worked for an engineering contractor that conducted inspections at construction sites in Maryland, D.C., and Virginia.
Melendez offered supervisors fake documents for any illegal aliens at the work site, and also sold the illegal immigrants fraudulent immigration papers for thousands of dollars apiece.
A federal judge on Friday sentenced the Baltimore County resident to two-and-a-half years in prison, followed by two years of supervised release, for his scheme to supply illegal aliens with fraudulent birth certificates and Social Security numbers. Melendez is a United States citizen and is not subject to deportation.
According to documents signed by a federal agent assigned to the “Rochester 8” investigative team, Melendez manufactured and sold dozens of fake IDs from September 2009 to July 2010. Illegal immigrants paid him between $1,000 to $6,000 for each set of fake documents, and he made as much as $70,000 during those 11 months, documents said.
Authorities first began investigating after finding eight people had applied for passports using fake birth certificates claiming birth in Rochester, N.Y. The documents appeared nearly identical, and the passport applications were all sent from the same post offices in Alexandria and Essex, Md.
Federal agents tracked down one of Melendez’s customers who said he first met Melendez outside a construction company on Route 1 and Powder Mill Road in Prince George’s County, documents said. Two other illegal immigrants said they learned about Melendez at a temporary job site and met him at Landmark Mall in Alexandria to buy fake birth certificates and other documents for $2,500 each. Another illegal worker told investigators that Melendez approached him at a construction site in Silver Spring.
Nine illegal aliens in the case, most from South and Central America, were previously indicted in Baltimore and Alexandria. Charges included making a false statement in their passport application, making a false claim of U.S. citizenship, and using a fraudulent Social Security number. Eight have pleaded guilty; the ninth is a fugitive.
