19-Year Jail Term for Accused in Immigration Fraud

In the Belmopan Magistrate’s Court, Corozal Town resident Mark Antonio Rosales was on Monday ordered to serve nineteen years’ imprisonment. He was unable to pay fines of forty-six thousand dollars in relation to convictions on multiple counts of obtaining property by deception. Magistrate Ladonna John found thirty-one-year-old Rosales guilty of nineteen counts of the charge, acquitting him three others. For each count, in default of paying the fine, he was ordered to serve one year, and the sentences were ordered to run consecutively.  Salvadoran national Alberto Lopez said he met Rosales, who claimed to be the head of the Immigration Department, in August of 2015, and they spoke about how Rosales could help Lopez “get legal” – that is, get residency in Belize and obtain a passport. Lopez initially gave Rosales one thousand two hundred dollars to begin the process and Rosales promised things would be ready in a month. According to Lopez, he ended up giving Rosales, a total of seven thousand and fifty-five dollars by September twenty-ninth, 2015 in twenty-two installments. Lopez said Rosales came up with excuses as to why the process was taking so long, claiming that Immigration had mistakenly given his passport to someone else and wanted him to pay to retrieve it. An unrepresented Rosales was ordered to stand trial in the Supreme Court and in January was formally indicted before Justice Adolph Lucas, along with forty-three-year-old Marcos Basto. The men are accused of twenty-five counts of forgery-related offenses: twelve counts of uttering a forged document and thirteen counts of preparation of a crime to which both have pleaded not guilty. Basto and Rosales are due back in the Supreme Court on Friday, March second.