BELMOPAN, Tues. Feb. 27, 2018– Today at the Belmopan Magistrate’s Court, Mark Rosalez, 35, of Orange Walk Town, who impersonated an Immigration officer, was ordered to pay a fine of $46,000, and faced a sentence of 19 years in jail if he failed to make such a payment, after he was found guilty of 19 counts of claiming upon false documents.

He was unable to pay the fine. The jail sentence is the equivalent of a total of 19 one-year sentences for each count of the offence, to be served consecutively.

Police reported that Rosalez, impersonating an Immigration officer, conned Alberto Lopez, 45, a Salvadoran living in Belmopan, into giving him $7,055 by making the false claim that he, Rosalez, would assist Lopez to get legal status in Belize by providing him with certain documents. Lopez paid him in 22 installments, but no such documents were delivered by Rosalez.

Information to us is that Lopez was working as a salesman in Orange Walk Town in August of last year, when he was approached by a man purporting to be an Immigration officer, who demanded to see his documents as a legal resident of Belize.

When Lopez told him that he was not in possession of such documents, the supposed Immigration officer who reportedly identified himself as Mark Rosalez, offered to help him become a Belizean citizen, and that was when Lopez said that he began to pay Rosalez to help him.

But after paying the money and not getting any documents, only promises and the push-around, Lopez went to police and made a report, and police began an investigation.

Police then found out that Rosalez was not an Immigration officer, and never had been. He was then arrested and charged with 19 counts of claiming upon false documents.