A Ghanaian national, named Sampson Lovelace Boateng also known as ‘Pastor’, 53, is pleading guilty in a US court to conspiracy and alien smuggling charges into the US. He faces between five and 15 years in prison plus a fine of $250,000 in addition to deportation after serving the sentence. According to an official court report, some of the aliens were smuggled in the compartments of buses, and that the services of DHL and Western Union were exploited in facilitating the illegal dealing. Mr. Boateng, who operated out of Belize in Mexico, and his co-conspirator, Mohammed Kamel Ibrahim, were jointly charged on a 28-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia on October 31, 2007. Mr. Boateng admitted that between June, 2006 and February, 2007, he conspired with others to smuggle unauthorized aliens to the United States by providing them with fraudulently obtained visas which cost $500, the court report said. Mr. Boateng and his co-conspirator housed the aliens for several days or weeks in Mexico before they were smuggled into the US and that smuggling fees totalled approximately $5,000 per person. These documents, which he obtained through a corrupt employee of the Mexican Embassy in Belize, enabled East African aliens to travel to Mexico and reach a point where they could be smuggled across the southern US border. According to the court report, Mr. 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 Ghanaians – Frank Boateng, 28, and Kwame Boakye, 26, as well as his wife, a Belizean woman by name Irma Valencia, 49, were arrested in connection with what police has said was a major immigration scam. On November 2, 2007, Belize police and immigration officers raided two houses in the city, one on Smith Street, Kings Park, and the other at the corner of Cemetery Road and Partridge Street, Lake I, and found passports for various nationalities, as well a collection of immigration papers and a computer they believed was being used in the scam. “They were also accused of placing immigration stamps inside the passports to make it appear as if the holders of the passports had visited Belize, when it was not so”, the report said. Mr. Boateng’s wife 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 brought from places like Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Nepal. The court report said that Ibrahim worked through Mr. Boateng and others to fraudulently procure various foreign travel documents such as Mexican visas, enabling the persons to reach the US finally. He would communicate with the Ghanaian, “to discuss the smuggling operation, to advertise his alien-smuggling services, to negotiate fees for aliens who were to be smuggled into the United States, to co-ordinate the delivery of the fake obtained travel documents, to communicate regarding the payment of fees and implement smuggling arrangements and events and also resolve issues that arose”. It further stated that Mr. Boateng and his men took steps to cover up and maintain the secrecy of their alien smuggling activities to protect themselves from prosecution and to permit them to continue in the business. The report captured an e-mail Ibrahim sent on or about July 29, 2006, instructing the sponsor of two aliens to pay some money to Mr. Boateng: “Please send the money to Lovelace, Belize City by Western Union… They gave them 8 days to stay in Mexico, but they have 3 months to use the visa”. Another e-mail around the same time from Ibrahim to his smuggling associate read: “I have a visa deal from Ethiopia, but it’s little bit expensive, I am currently in Belize to collect some guys. I will get it in 3 days, but it will cost $5,000. If you need it send me passports ASAP to Kamel Ibrahim, DHL office Belize City, Belize 0050162530810”. Before US District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, Mr. Boateng pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and three counts of bringing aliens to the United States for profits, but there was no indication of how much money he made from the scam. Source: Gye Nyame Concord