Filipinos Wilfredo Tiongco Ngo and Maria Teresa Lamayo Ngo operated a massive scheme that kept illegal immigrants secretly working in the United States at the pair's elderly health care assistance business in Orange County.
By repeatedly changing their company's name, encouraging sham marriages and manipulating independent contractor employment laws, the pair avoided detection by the Department of Homeland Security until confidential informants squealed and federal agents made arrests.
In 2010, the defendants signed guilty pleas for aiding and abetting illegal alien residency.
]
U.S. District Court Judge Dave O. Carter then ignored the wishes
of a federal prosecutor who wanted the defendants sent to prison for one
year and instead sentenced them to two years of probation.
In
2011, the Ngos discovered that government immigration officials had
opened deportation proceedings against them for their crimes. They asked
Carter to withdraw their guilty pleas by claiming their defense lawyers
had not advised them that they would be automatically deported. They
even cited a U.S. Supreme Court case they claimed invalidates their convictions because of “ineffective assistance of counsel.”
But
this month, Carter determined that the pair had lied about not knowing
the consequences of their guilty pleas. He refused to vacate the
convictions and thus is allowing the deportations to occur. In other
words, it's two official “noes” for the Ngos.
According to federal law enforcement reports reviewed by the Weekly, the pair operated using the names A-Plus Senior Planning Services, A-Plus Senior Services, Inc. and Better Care Solutions and employed as many as 44 foreign nationals at one time.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.