While immigrants were in deportation proceedings, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorney was stealing their identities to go on a $190,000 shopping spree.
On Thursday, Raphael Sanchez was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty in February to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors said the former attorney, who had worked for the mass deportation agency for more than 15 years and already made a comfortable six-figure salary, used ICE’s databases “to obtain the personal information of the seven people, including their social security numbers, birth dates, phone numbers and addresses.”
Sanchez then used that information to create fake documents and open numerous credit lines and live an extravagant lifestyle at the expense of immigrants. “His fraud attempts allegedly involved American Express, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Citibank and Discover Financial Services”:
Sanchez also lied to the Internal Revenue Service for three years, claiming a few aliens as dependent family members to receive extra tax deductions, according to a Justice Department statement.
Some of Sanchez’s victims had already been deported and “were not aware that debt balances were growing, the sentencing memorandum from prosecutors said.” As part of the plea deal, Judge Robert Lasnik ordered Sanchez to pay $190,000 in restitution.
“Raphael Sanchez was entrusted with overseeing the honest enforcement of our country’s immigration laws,” the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) John Cronan said, adding that Sanchez “abused that trust, and capitalized on his position at ICE to exploit his victims and line his own pockets.”