In Orange County, an email landed in attorney Sabrina Rivera\u2019s inbox in April, from a Colorado man panicked about the status of his immigration case.<\/p>\n
He told Rivera that she was his lawyer. But Rivera had never heard his name before, never represented him and had no idea why he thought she had.<\/p>\n
The man sent screenshots of his text conversations with someone claiming to be Rivera. Someone was using her name \u2014 and her state bar license number \u2014 to scam the man into believing she was representing him in his removal proceedings. He had paid the impostor at least $700 since February, he told her.<\/p>\n
Immigration law scams surged in the past year and a half, since the Trump administration\u2019s crackdown resulted in thousands of new cases flooding the court system, attorneys and immigrant aid groups say. <\/p>\n
The area of law has always been ripe for fraud, but the hustles have evolved, getting more sophisticated in the past year. Most recently, scammers have been taking on the identities of practicing attorneys.<\/p>\n
Some rely on AI to generate realistic-looking attorney photos and websites. Other scammers take videos<\/a> and photos<\/a> from real practicing attorneys and overlay different audio<\/a> to trick immigrants into sending them money.<\/p>\n Bar-licensed attorneys have also tried to fast-track the system, filing invalid for asylum or lawful permanent residency applications for unknowing clients.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really the worst environment that I think anyone in the field has ever seen for taking advantage of people,\u201d said Daniel Sharp, the chief of the Los Angeles County Office of Immigrant Affairs. \u201cFolks are more desperate for services than before.\u201d<\/p>\n Alexandra Lozano, who was licensed to practice law in Washington state and had an office in Commerce, surrendered her bar license<\/a> and closed her law firm in June. Clients claim she fabricated stories of domestic abuse and human trafficking to apply for humanitarian visas, allegedly without her clients knowing.<\/p>\n Lawyers and nonprofit organizations say they have identified at least 60 Los Angeles-based immigrants who were her clients. The number is likely much higher, said Lucero Ortiz, a clinical supervising attorney at the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic. <\/p>\n \u201cThese are people who are trying to follow the rules and navigate a very complex legal system. Their best intentions are being taken advantage of,\u201d said Kevin Brennan, the vice president of communications at Catholic Charities USA, an organization that represents more than 170 religious agencies across the country.<\/p>\n More than 60 of its organizations that provide direct legal services have been impersonated by con artists. The organizations have handled over a thousand scam cases in the past year.<\/p>\n Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, a member of Catholic Charities Los Angeles, has received calls about potential impersonation cases involving its attorneys at least weekly since Trump retook office.<\/p>\n Lately, it happens daily, said Jose Luis Garcia, the interim program director.<\/p>\n There is little data on the extent of the fraud cases, because reporting is so sporadic and scattered across dozens of agencies. <\/p>\n One marker: The Federal Trade Commission received 1,626 immigration service fraud complaints in 2025, up from 1,315 the year before and 623 reports in 2023.<\/p>\n In total, 26 immigration lawyers have faced disciplinary actions nationwide this year as of late June, according to an analysis of data published<\/a> by the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Eight of those were lawyers licensed to practice law in California, outpacing the six cases reported in all of 2025.<\/p>\n The state bar received 1,637 non-attorney complaints from July 2025 to June of this year, a spokesperson said. (These are not all related to immigration cases.) The agency received 1,223 complaints the year before, and 908 the year before that. <\/p>\n The scams typically range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. In one case, a family paid up to $30,000, attorneys said. People have sold personal belongings, like their cars, to afford services that turn out to be bogus, said Christopher Ross, who oversees migration and refugee resettlement services at Catholic Charities USA.<\/p>\n One man in Los Angeles wanted to apply for a green card and paid $6,000 to someone posing as a lawyer in June. He received a fake green card approval, but the bogus attorney demanded he wire over another $4,000 through Zelle so the official documentation could be mailed to him, said Joel Rodriguez, the program director of Immigration Refugee Resettlement at Catholic Charities of Los Angeles. He sent the money and never heard from the person again.<\/p>\n When immigrants realize they\u2019ve been ripped off, they\u2019re often left with no money to secure real representation. Their cases become more complicated if false applications have been filed, making future legal work more expensive and can put them at risk of immediate deportation, Ortiz said. <\/p>\n The fraud has only added pressure on a over-strained immigration system. Thousands of immigrants are now seeking new representation, even as most nonprofit and pro bono legal services in the region are at capacity, with their funding cut<\/a> by the Trump administration. <\/p>\n Martha paced the lobby of an office building in Oxnard one afternoon in December. She was nervous, but determined.<\/p>\n Just a few feet away, the man she hired more than three years ago to handle her naturalization case hid in his office, seemingly avoiding her. But after months of unanswered questions, Martha was intent to get some answers.<\/p>\n A family friend had recommended the man to Martha and her husband in early 2023. The couple had already met with several lawyers, who told them her case \u201cwas basically impossible.\u201d They decided to give it another shot, and set an appointment with the man.<\/p>\n He sold them a dream.<\/p>\n \u201cHe promised he could make our case succeed,\u201d she said. \u201cHe gave us hope. So we signed the contract.\u201d<\/p>\n In three years, they paid him $14,000 as their case stalled.<\/p>\n Now he refused to answer the door. That night, her daughter-in-law stayed awake, scouring the internet for answers. She searched for his state bar number. Nothing. She looked at California\u2019s attorney database. Still nothing.<\/p>\n Then, she got a hit.<\/p>\n But the man wasn\u2019t a lawyer. He was an immigration consultant.<\/p>\n Immigration consultants are not attorneys, but can be licensed by California to perform certain functions, like filling out immigration forms. <\/p>\n While the profession is legitimate, it has become a breeding ground for bad actors, who often claim to be lawyers and prey on vulnerable immigrants, said Kathleen Rivas, the supervising attorney for the immigrant rights project at Public Counsel.<\/p>\n Marissa Montes, the director of Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic, was impersonated by someone who contacted immigrants through Facebook and Whatsapp, she said. <\/p>\n She tried to report the fraud but hit a wall. The state bar suggested Montes contact local authorities, but Los Angeles police didn\u2019t have jurisdiction, since the scammer claimed to be based in Utah, and the victim was based in Colorado. She contacted the bank that the impersonator was using, but the company said it couldn\u2019t do anything without a police report.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no mechanism to truly stop this person is what is scary,\u201d Montes said.<\/p>\n In Orange County, Rivera reported her impostor to the state bar, which is investigating.<\/p>\n \u201cAttorneys need to report this,\u201d Rivera said. \u201cWe can\u2019t rely on community members who are in removal proceedings to report this to the state bar when they have so much going on.\u201d<\/p>\n The State Bar of California said all immigrants seeking representation should ensure the contact information for any lawyer matches what is on its website. Immigrants should also demand face-to-face consultations and a valid office address before hiring anyone.<\/p>\n The state bar is able to pursue disciplinary action only against California-licensed attorneys, but has no authority against impostors. It can only send cease-and-desist notices and refer the cases to local law enforcement agencies, a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s immigration fraud landscape is decades in the making, lawyers said.<\/p>\n The most vulnerable are immigrants who have been in the country for decades, with no access to immigration legalization, Ortiz said. The last comprehensive immigration reform was passed in 1986,<\/a> when the Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized millions of undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n Newer immigrant arrivals tend to have more access to specific temporary<\/a> or humanitarian pathways<\/a> that provide immigration relief. A political asylum<\/a> application, for instance, must be submitted within a year of initial entry. <\/p>\n For Martha, perhaps the worst action taken by the immigration consultant: He filed a political asylum case on her behalf instead, which she does not qualify for and didn\u2019t want. Asylum cases must be filed within a year of entry in the country, and an invalid claim could lead to deportation proceedings.<\/p>\n \u201cHe kept our money, and left us with this huge mess,\u201d Martha said. \u201cNow, I\u2019m just always with the fear that I\u2019ll get an immigration appointment for the asylum case that I didn\u2019t want.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Orange County, an email landed in attorney Sabrina Rivera\u2019s inbox in April, from a Colorado man panicked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1052,7,90944,3982,2624,48,52,51,721,1429,47,50,49,1555,68514,20734,27123,103209,167670,3293,167671],"class_list":["post-419419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-attorney","tag-california","tag-fraud-case","tag-immigrant","tag-june","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-law","tag-lawyer","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-man","tag-martha","tag-nonprofit-organization","tag-past-year","tag-rivera","tag-state-bar-license-number","tag-thousand","tag-unknowing-client"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}