Fake Marriage Leads to Law License Suspension

(CN) - The Ohio Supreme Court suspended a Ghanaian attorney who tried to attain American citizenship by fraudulent marriage.

Lilian Antwiwaa Asante arrived in the United States in 2002 to attend law school at Ohio State University.

Later that month she married a student at Case Western Reserve University who also came from Ghana. Their marriage ended in 2004.

Asante began practicing immigration law in November 2005. Three months later, she married Randy Weight, an American citizen who lived in Florida.

The couple took steps to acquire permanent legal U.S. residency for Asante, even as she lived in Ohio with her first husband and had a child with that man in 2008.

In 2009, Asante pleaded guilty to entering into a fraudulent marriage to subvert U.S. immigration law.

She returned to Ghana, and the Ohio Supreme Court suspended her law license indefinitely Tuesday.

"Asante attempted to defraud the United States Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services while she herself was running an immigration-law practice," the unsigned opinion states. "If a lawyer assisting people with the immigration process becomes enmeshed with immigration fraud herself, it is a stain upon the profession and a detriment to the public's view of lawyers."

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