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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Immigrant Can’t Pass the Buck for Fake Green Card

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - A South Korean woman who overstayed her visa and paid $10,000 for a bogus green card cannot insist on staying in the country simply because a government employee sold her the phony card, the 9th Circuit ruled.

Young Sun Shin paid the money to a go-between for Leland Sustaire, who used his position in the federal government to sell phony green cards.

Shin tried to assert that the government could not deport her because it had unclean hands.

Judge Bea disagreed.

"The government cannot be saddled with the felonious, unauthorized issuance of residency documentation by a thieving employee," the judge wrote.

Bea pointed out that Shin's "green card" asserted that she was married to an American, when in fact she was divorced from a man who had never been to America.

"These facts make plain that Shin is not an innocent dupe, but rather a party who sought to benefit from Sustaire's scheme," Bea wrote.

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