Two more U.S. Navy members, both women, now also face federal fraud charges involving a scam that used people in Jacksonville to stage fake marriages with Chinese immigrants.
Charges filed Tuesday, Dec. 23, against Morgan Chambers and Jacinth Bailey are at least the third and fourth cases in Jacksonville’s federal court this year involving military members who prosecutors say took part in sham weddings after being promised $45,000 in one case and $35,000 in others.
Both women are charged with conspiracy to commit marriage fraud, which carries a maximum potential sentence of five years behind bars.
They were charged through court documents referred to as informations and waived their rights to be formally indicted, a choice sometimes made because defendants plan to plead guilty. However, neither woman has faced a judge yet or entered any plea.
No one else is mentioned by name in the informations, but the documents describe actions by unnamed conspirators that match dates and actions in similar cases filed this year against a former Navy recruiter, Brinio Urena, and a reservist, Raymond Zumba, who previously served together on the Mayport-based destroyer USS Carney.
Bailey’s information said that a nameless “conspirator” matching court accounts of Zumba told her “she would be paid approximately $45,00 for the entire process of marrying a Chinese national, applying and obtaining a ‘green card’ for her future, nominal husband, and then divorcing him.”
Immigrants can become green card-carrying, permanent legal residents by marrying American citizens, then get divorced while remaining in the United States.
Bailey flew to New York City, met the groom and other people from the conspiracy and married him in January in Connecticut, her information said.
Zumba pleaded guilty Dec. 12 to being part of a marriage scam that prosectors said only ended when he was arrested in February for offering bribes for bogus Navy IDs to get Chinese immigrants into Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
Zumba, 28, pleaded guilty to the bribery charge in July and is awaiting sentencing for both cases, which could combine for potential maximum prison term of 20 years. Urena pleaded guilty in August and is scheduled for sentencing Jan. 21.
Like the women charged this week, both Urena’s case and Zumba’s bribery charge involved helping Chinese immigrants in return for money.
A marriage-fraud information filed against Zumba on Dec. 5 also aligns with the case against Chambers, saying that Zumba traveled to Las Vegas to join Urena and a servicemember labeled “Conspirator D” at a sham wedding on Oct. 4, 2024.
The filing included a description of a conversation Zumba had over a group chat in September 2024, explaining when payments would be made in the marriage scam.
The unnamed sailor “would be paid $10,000 up front, $20,000 when a ‘green card’ was obtained for her future, nominal husband and $5,000 when the divorce was settled,” the information said.
A plea agreement Urena signed in August said three people he talked to about sham marriages ended up marrying Chinese spouses. Although no names were used, specifics in Urena’s plea match pieces of the charges against Chambers, such as the fact that prosecutors say she married a Chinese immigrant in Las Vegas on Oct. 4, 2024, the same date that Urena’s plea says “Conspirators C and D married” in Clark County, Nevada. Urena’s plea says the Navy woman in that marriage worked with him as a Navy recruiter, but it’s unknown whether Chambers ever held that post.
Online wedding records from Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, reflect a marriage involving someone with Chambers’ name and a groom whose first and last names match the plaintiff in a federal court case filed in November in Southern California against Joseph Edlow, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. That case (for which documents weren’t publicly available) was voluntarily dismissed in early December and it’s not clear what it was about or whether that had any connection to Chambers or the wedding fraud charges.
Zumba’s information filing described him talking to at least 11 people about a conspiracy that ran from April 2024 until his arrest.
Court records from the bribery case said that Zumba reached out in January to an ex-shipmate from the Carney whose wife was a contract employee at the NAS Jacksonville personnel office that made base identification “smart cards.” Zumba asked the shipmate whether his wife could get the cards “for immigration purposes” for Zumba’s Chinese-born in-laws, offering to pay $3,500 for two cards, according to court records.
Not realizing his old shipmate would report him to federal investigators, Zumba also told the shipmate that he and his wife could make $35,000 apiece by being part of sham marriages, court records said.
Bailey’s information also said that when she traveled to New York, another unnamed conspirator told her “to apply for and obtain a military identification card … that would enable … [her groom] to access military facilities.”
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: 2 Navy women offered $35K-$45K for sham weddings to Chinese, feds say
Reporting by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
