Chang Yu “Andy” He, 55, the owner of Fair Price Immigration Service, pleaded guilty today to a federal conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and admitted that he helped orchestrate a scheme in which Chinese nationals paid up to $60,000 to enter into sham marriages with U.S. citizens in the hope of obtaining “green cards.”              of Monterey Park, e, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud.

            From January 2018 to November 2019, Andy recruited United States citizens to enter into marriages with Chinese nationals, who then filed immigration documents with United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).  He planned to arrange fraudulent marriages for three pairs of Chinese nationals and U.S. citizens to obtain green cards. The U.S. citizens in these situations were actually undercover agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). He also met with a co-defendant and two other undercover agents for the purpose of arranging the agents into sham marriages with Chinese nationals.

Andy admitted coaching the Chinese nationals and United States citizens on how to make their marriages appear genuine and how to pass interviews conducted by the USCIS, such as by creating a fraudulent paper trail for the couples and memorizing answers to questions immigration service officers could ask during their USCIS interviews. Andy instructed the “couples” to obtain joint bank accounts and joint apartment leases, keep clothes in the apartments where the couples supposedly lived together, and visit the apartment several days a week so the neighbors would see them together.

In October 2018, Andy introduced a U.S. citizen, who actually was an undercover federal agent, to co-defendant Xiaojun Han, 40, of Irvine, for the purpose of entering into a sham marriage to obtain a green card. He paid the undercover agent $10,000 to enter into the sham marriage and, in April 2019, met with the agent at the Rosemead Public Library to help with Han's immigration paperwork, the plea agreement states. He admitted telling the agent that he would be paid $25,000 when Han received her green card, as well as $5,000 at the end of the immigration process.

Co-defendants Huanzhang Wu, 29, of St. Paul, Minnesota, Zhongnan Liu, 34, of San Diego, who paid He to arrange sham their sham marriages, each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit marriage fraud. Wu was sentenced to one year of probation. Liu has not yet been sentenced. Han and Xiulan “Cindy” Wang, 47, of San Gabriel, the owner of Pacific Bizhub Consulting, have a trial date. 

This investigation began in March 2017 based on information provided by an anonymous source. Law enforcement authorities believe the defendants' clients learned about the service through word of mouth and from advertisements in Chinese newspapers.