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Ghanaian alien smuggler pleads guilty in US court

GeneralGhanaian alien smuggler pleads guilty in US court
The United States District Court of Columbia in Washington, DC, USA, announced Tuesday, April 22, that Sampson Lovelace Boateng, a.k.a. “Pastor” or “Gabriel Gabadah”, 53, who had lived in Belize up to last year, had pleaded guilty to conspiracy and alien smuggling charges, and now faces 5 to 15 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, plus deportation after serving time.
 
The official court report released Tuesday said that some of the aliens were smuggled in the compartments of buses, and the services of DHL and Western Union were exploited in facilitating the illegal business.
 
Boateng, a Ghanaian who operated out of Belize, and his co-conspirator, Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim who operated out of Mexico, were jointly charged on a 28-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia on October 31, 2007. At the time of the report Tuesday, Ibrahim was still awaiting extradition from Mexico.
 
“Sampson Lovelace Boateng, 53, admitted that between approximately June 2006 and February 2007, he conspired with others to smuggle unauthorized aliens to the United States by providing them with fraudulently obtained Mexican visas,” said the release. “Boateng charged approximately $500 per visa. These documents, which Boateng obtained through a corrupt employee of the Mexican Embassy in Belize, enabled East African aliens to travel into Mexico and reach a point where they could be smuggled across the southern U.S. border.”
 
Boateng, who was formally arrested in the US on November 5, 2007, reportedly operated as a car dealer while in Belize. He was extradited from Belize after he and two other Ghanaians – Frank Boateng (his brother), 28, and Gwame Boakye, 26, as well as his the common-law wife, a Belizean woman named Irma Valencia, 49, were arrested in connection with what police had said was a major immigration scam.
 
On November 2, 2007, Belize police and immigration officers had raided two houses in Belize City, one on Smith Street, Kings Park, and the other at the corner of Cemetery Road and Partridge Street, Lake I, and had reportedly found passports for various nationalities, as well an array of immigration papers and a computer they believed was being used in the scam. The group was accused of placing Immigration stamps inside the passports to make it appear as if the holders of the passports had visited Belize, when in fact they hadn’t. (Belizean authorities had found Immigration stamp supplies, along with some passports in a bathroom, inside a sewage bowl at the Smith Street residence.)
 
Valencia was employed as a secretary at the Mexican Embassy while the scam was ongoing.
 
In the indictment made last year, the US court said that under the scheme, aliens were smuggled to the US from places like Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Nepal.
 
The document said that Ibrahim worked through Boateng and others to fraudulently procure various foreign travel documents, such as Mexican visas, enabling the persons to reach the US. He would communicate with Boateng, “to discuss the smuggling operation, to advertise his alien-smuggling services, to negotiate smuggling fees for aliens who were to be smuggled into the United States, to coordinate the delivery of fraudulently obtained travel documents, to communicate regarding payment of smuggling fees, to coordinate and implement smuggling arrangements and events, and to resolve issues that arose in the smuggling operation.”
 
It further states that the men took steps to conceal and maintain the secrecy of their alien smuggling activities to protect themselves from prosecution and to permit them to continue to engage in alien smuggling.
 
“On or about July 29, 2006, Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim sent an e-mail instructing the sponsor of Alien-2 to pay a smuggling fee. Ibrahim stated: Please send the money to: Sampson Lovelace Boateng, Belize City, Belize, by Western Union …They gave them 8 days to stay in Mexico, but they have three months to use the visa …” [sic]
 
Another email around the same date from Ibrahim to a smuggling associate said, “…I have a visa deal from Ethiopia, but it is little bit expensive. I am currently in Belize to collect some guys. I will get it in 3 days, but it will cost 5,000USD. If you need it send me passports ASAP to Kamel Ibrahim, DHL office Belize City, Belize 00501 6253080 …” [sic]
 
The report released by the US Court Tuesday said that Boateng had pled “…guilty to charges of conspiracy and alien smuggling in connection with his role in smuggling East Africans to the United States.”
 
The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General, Alice S. Fisher, of the Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey A. Taylor; and Assistant Secretary, Julie L. Myers, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
 
“Boateng’s co-conspirators housed the aliens for several days or weeks in Mexico, and then smuggled them to the United States by various means, including by concealing the aliens for more than twelve hours in the luggage compartments of buses,” the court report added. “Smuggling fees totaled approximately $5,000 per person by the time the aliens reached the United States.”
 
Before U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and three counts of bringing aliens to the United States for profit, but there was no indication of how much money Boateng would have made from the scheme.
 
Closure on the case follows cross-border efforts, including investigations in Belize by Government of Belize security and immigration officials, the US Drug Enforcement Agency and US Embassy, and in the United States by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, with assistance from the ICE Miami and Guatemala City.
 
Trial Attorney Brian Rogers, of the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Harvey of the District of Columbia are prosecuting the case.
 
(We understand that Valencia is out on $50,000 bail in Belize, while the other two Ghanaians nabbed in Belize last November have not been arraigned before US authorities, and were to be expelled from Belize after the Immigration prosecutor said that they would not continue prosecution here. US Feds escorted Boateng to Miami, but we were unable to ascertain at press time whether the other two Ghanaians had indeed left Belize.)

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