NEW YORK, CMC:

A former United States immigration official and his sister have pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges in a million-dollar scheme to arrange sham marriages in order to obtain illegal green cards for Caribbean and other immigrants.

Phillip Browne, 41, who worked until December 2005 as a district adjudication officer for the U.S. Federal Citizenship and Immigration Services in Manhattan, and his sister, Beverly Mozer-Browne, 50, who once owned a financial and legal-service business in Queens, pleaded guilty Friday to the charges in a U.S. Federal District court here.

Authorities said Mozer-Browne's 'Help Preparers Professional Services', was a front for the procurement of illegal permanent-residence documents, popularly known as green cards.

Browne and Mozer-Browne were originally charged in the scheme with nearly two dozen others in June 2006.

All but one of them, Wendy Harrison, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted in the case. Authorities said Harrison is a fugitive.

Caribbean immigrants defrauded

Authorities could not determine how many people Browne and Mozer-Browne defrauded were Caribbean immigrants.

But prosecutors said that, from April 2001 through November 2005, Help Preparers Professional Services provided hundreds of illegal green cards for its clients, charging US$8,000 to US$16,000 a person and generating more than US$1 million in revenue.

Browne and his sister pleaded guilty to arranging for some clients to marry American citizens under false pretenses and to producing documentation of non-existent marriages for others.

Authorities said that Help Preparers used the false marriage documents, along with fraudulent financial documents, like fictitious letters from employers, to apply for green cards for its clients.

The applications were mailed to the New York office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, a part of the Homeland Security Department, where Browne approved them without interviewing the applicants as required by law.

The original indictment in the case charged 13 employees of Help Preparers, two other people who scouted citizens willing to marry clients, two citizens who were paid to enter sham marriages, and 11 clients.

Browne and Mozer-Browne each face a maximum sentence of five years in prison when they are sentenced this winter.