Immigrant family swindled by con artist

From the Times Ledger:

A family of Korean immigrants who live in Bayside fear they may be split apart after a broker whom they paid to handle their green card applications failed to follow the proper procedures.

Joanne Lee, 17, who will be a senior this fall at Flushing’s Townsend Harris High School, said her family is concerned that she; her sister, Hayoung, 15,and their mother, Yoojung Choi Lee, could be deported after U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services denied their applications for green cards.

A broker whom the family paid $16,000 to handle the filings did not include all of the necessary documents, Joanne Lee said.

“She assured us all the proceedings were legal,” said Lee, who is an honor roll student. “But she was a fraud. She filed the wrong papers.”

Lee’s father, Bong Chang Lee, and brother, Jason, 5, would be allowed to stay in the United States. The mother and daughters first moved from South Korea to Queens in 2000 to find treatment for Hayoung Lee, who suffers from a form of epilepsy, but the father, who is a manager at a food plant in Rockland County, arrived shortly thereafter and applied for a green card separately. The couple’s son was born in the United States.