U.S. News

Fort Bragg Soldier Brokered Sham Marriages to Skirt Immigration Laws: DOJ

I THEE SCAM

The soldiers who married the foreign nationals would, in turn, receive a housing stipend from the military and be allowed to live off-base.

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Chris Keane/Reuters

A former U.S. soldier allegedly facilitated sham marriages between soldiers at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg and foreign citizens to circumvent American immigration authorities. Ebenezer Yeboah Asane, a former soldier, and Samuel Manu Agyapong, a current Fort Bragg sergeant, are charged alongside a ring of nine others with marriage fraud, transporting and harboring aliens, visa fraud, obstruction, making false statements, and conspiracy to commit marriage fraud, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday. The foreign citizens were able to get permanent residency and, in turn, the soldiers would be allowed to live off the base and receive a housing allowance instead of being quartered in barracks. How long the marriage ring continued is unclear, but last year, another Fort Bragg soldier was found guilty of arranging fake marriages for two female soldiers on the base.

Read it at Department of Justice

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