A New York City man pretending to be a law enforcement officer promised a woman that he could help her get a green card if she invested $500,000 in him, prosecutors said Friday. Instead, the man retained the money and never submitted his visa application as he promised.
He lied to the woman whose indictment was only Jane Doe, given her various excuses for years as to why she was delayed for years, according to an undisclosed federal indictment Friday.
The man, 49-year-old Tommy Aijie da Silva Weng, was arrested Friday and charged with wire fraud, mail fraud and imitation of federal agents. Officials said he will be detained until Monday’s bail hearing.
Prosecutors asked him to be detained in light of his extensive ties and travel to China. His attorney, Jullian Harris-Calvin, declined to comment.
“The defendant predated the victim to become a U.S. citizen and pursue the American Dream, and then stole not only that dream, but hundreds of thousands of dollars,” U.S. Attorney John J. Durham, the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement Friday.
According to the indictment, the plan began when Mr. Wang met with the victim in China in 2016 and told her that he was a federal law enforcement officer who was looking for investors on behalf of the U.S. government to build a hotel for a project in California. At a later meeting, he showed her the “Federal Police Association” business card with his name on it.
Mr. Wang told the woman that if she invested at least $500,000, she might be eligible to apply for a green card under the EB-5 program, and he would use his “contact” to speed up the process.
The EB-5 program (also known as the Immigration Investor Program), allows foreigners to become permanent residents of the United States if they invest a large amount of money into business businesses that create jobs.
Court documents show that the woman signed a contract with Mr. Wang that day and wrote a $501,500 check to his company, Ding Cheng Hospeas Management Inc. According to the indictment, the amount included $1,500, which he said she owed him the filing fee.
Prosecutors said Mr. Wang later gave the woman a receipt, which had a number to track her application on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website.
After some time, the woman began to complain about her application – without the name displayed on the website – without progress in the system, and Mr. Wang responded to the excuse for “administrative delay”.
Then in 2018, Mr. Wang gave her a new number that when she entered it into the website, it showed that the application was approved. Prosecutors said the USCIS database has no records of any EB-5 paperwork filed on behalf of the woman.
Years later, Mr. Wang repeatedly told the woman that her application was in progress and that it was “part of a government-supported plan, everything must be completed secretly.”
To keep her appearance, Mr. Wang habitually asked the woman to make personal records, file a lawsuit, use excuses to delay, and send her fake photos. He also claimed he was an agent of the Department of Homeland Security, which had been transferred to a new position at Interpol in Italy, according to court documents.
Prosecutors said Mr. Wang refunded about $75,000 to her when the woman threatened to withdraw her application and requested a refund.
Mr. Weng’s detention memorandum states that he drove a reading with a cultural license plate: BWTICE’s vanity license plate. The memo added that the first three letters are believed to involve his Buddhist temples in Flushing and Queens, while the last three letters represent U.S. immigration and customs enforcement agencies.
According to the indictment, Mr. Wang was previously arrested for impersonating an FBI agent to recruit young people to believe they are secret informants and secretly secretly for him. He showed off fake badges, FBI coats, NYPD vests and ice caps, etc.
He pleaded guilty to the illegal use of official badges and was sentenced to time before meeting the woman in China in 2016.
Kirsten Noyes Contributed to the research.
