Matthew Peters has seen a lot in the twelve years he’s provided services at the Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center in Easton. But on May 13th, just after reading a newsletter about immigration scams, he saw one himself.
A young couple, originally from Guatemala, came into his office. They’d missed their court date and panicked.
“They said… a friend sent us a Facebook link, and then we clicked on it,” he recounted. “Then, someone called us and said they were an attorney and that they could reopen our case, and they can give us our papers and all that.”
There was a phone number and when they called, they got a person that sounded like a lawyer. The couple sent in the initial $1,000, got some documents back, and then were asked for another $4,000. That’s when they got suspicious and went to Peters for help.
“I saw these documents that they were sending that look like official government documents from immigration,” said Peters, who is the center’s executive director.
But on a closer look, something wasn’t right.
“They're all backwards, like they're written in Spanish,” said Peters, when describing the dates on each piece of paperwork. “So, you know, we do the month first then the day. So, in all these immigration papers, everything was backwards.” He said it seemed like the documents were written by artificial intelligence.
Peters could connect the couple to a real lawyer. Facebook parent company META says they do remove accounts found to be in violation of their impersonation policies.
Scams like this are getting more elaborate.
The news outlet Documented reported a New York case where scammers set up an entire fake immigration court, complete with appointments, judges, and ICE officers. The Federal Trade Commission shared data with WYPR showing that immigration service related fraud doubled from 2023 to 2024.
Two sources for this story said that these types of scams are among the most difficult to prosecute because victims are almost always afraid to cooperate with authorities. There’s the fear of deportation, but as Peters says, these scams are also likely undercounted due to shame, language barriers, and the fact that many immigrants come from countries with a cultural distrust of the police.
Often, when Parker asks to know the name or location of the fraudster, clients will "forget."
“You know, it's code," said Parker. "In some cases, they'll show me, and they'll tell me, and then, yes, I'll go ahead and report it."
A spokesperson from the Maryland Office of the Attorney General wrote that when it comes to these kinds of fraud, “Unless required by law, the Office of the Attorney neither confirms nor denies the existence of investigations.”
Immigration advocates point out that there are spikes in fraud after every administration change. President Biden created programs to streamline the process and fraudsters moved in to imitate those too.
Reid Trautz, a senior director with the American Immigration Lawyers Association, has been sounding the alarms about these kinds of scams for a long time.
“The federal government only recognizes two people to really provide your assistance: a lawyer and an accredited rep.”
People can use resources like the American Bar Association to find an attorney in good standing-- although advocates still urge caution, as scammers are creating fake Bar Association logos to look more legitimate. Trautz says pastors and other community advocates can offer advice.
“But they can't charge you money to do it," he warns.
But those community members can be essential connectors to legitimate legal help.
“One of the compounding effects of the way that mass deportation is rolling out is that people are withdrawing more to themselves, and so there's fewer places where maybe they're in direct contact with trusted people or community institutions that they can lean on,” said Baltimore City Councilman Mark Parker, who represents Baltimore’s most Latino district.
The Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs, the Baltimore City agency that serves the city’s foreign-born community, runs regular training on scams so that people know the signs. That agency’s budget was just tripled by the City Council earlier this week, which could allow for more training resources.
