Kofi Amankwaa, a Ghanaian politician, has been sentenced to 6 years and one month in prison for his involvement in a large-scale immigration fraud scheme. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Amankwaa, a former immigration attorney, filed thousands of fraudulent immigration documents under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), exploiting vulnerable clients and undermining the U.S. immigration system.
Amankwaa’s scheme, which ran from 2016 to 2023, involved instructing clients to sign false petitions claiming they were victims of abuse by their U.S. citizen children.
He would then use these petitions to request advance parole travel documents, enabling his clients to travel abroad and return to the U.S. Amankwaa charged his clients between $3,000 and $6,000 for his services, plus administrative fees.
As part of his plea deal, Amankwaa agreed to forfeit $13.4 million and pay $16.5 million in restitution to his victims. His license to practice law in New York was suspended in 2023 and later revoked in 2024.
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