Woman in visa fraud case pleads guilty

A woman whose pretrial release was earlier revoked for failing to appear at a hearing and drug testing has pleaded guilty to visa fraud.

At a change of plea hearing on Monday afternoon, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona Manglona accepted Evengelyn Eudora Conrad Jones’ guilty plea and set the sentencing for June 12, 2015, at 9am.

Manglona unsealed the plea agreement and vacated the jury trial set for Monday, March 16.

Jones, 33, was remanded into the custody of the U.S. Marshal.

Court-appointed attorney David Banes served as counsel for Jones. Assistant U.S. attorney Russell Lorfing appeared for the U.S. government.

Visa fraud carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a $100 special assessment fee.

Under the plea deal, Jones agreed to forfeit to the U.S. government her interest to $540, representing the proceeds she obtained from the commission of the offense.

The U.S. government agreed not to prosecute Jones for her failure to appear at the hearing.

According to the factual basis of the plea agreement, Jones stated in a Form I-130 that she submitted to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service on Sept. 16, 2010, that an individual with the initials K.Y.O. was her “husband/wife”—a representation that she knew was false because she had divorced K.Y.O. in 2006.

Jones’ representation had a natural tendency to influence, or was capable of influencing, the decisions or activities of USCIS, according to the plea deal.

Form I-130 refers to a U.S. citizen’s petition for an alien relative.

Last month, Manglona revoked Jones’ pretrial release.

Manglona found that Jones’ series of failures to appear—for drug testing, for substance abuse treatment, and for court—in conjunction with the rebuttable presumption established by the U.S. government, show by a preponderance of the evidence that no combination of conditions can assure Jones’s appearance.

Manglona also determined that the court cannot rely on Jones to abide by any conditions that could be set.

U.S. Deputy Marshal Don Hall served Jones with an arrest warrant last Jan. 29. Manglona issued the arrest warrant after Jones failed to show up at the revocation hearing.

Jones was first arrested on an indictment charging her with one count of visa fraud and was released last Nov. 24 on a $5,000 unsecured bond.

U.S. Probation officer Gregory Arriola then filed a petition for revocation of her pre-trial release after she failed to appear for random drug tests on Dec. 16, 18, 20, and 30, 2014.

At the Jan. 20 revocation hearing, Jones did not show up in court. This prompted Manglona to order her arrest.

At the revocation hearing last Feb. 3, Jones, through counsel Banes, admitted to the violations alleged in the petition to revoke the pretrial release.