A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officer has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for taking bribes–including thousands of dollars and hundreds of egg rolls–in exchange for providing legal status or U.S. citizenship to foreign nationals.
The FBI, which worked with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General to crack the case, notes that Mai Nhu Nguyen, 48, had been entrusted with “the power to approve or deny applications for immigration benefits that are submitted by immigrants.”
From 2011 through June 2013, the FBI says, Nguyen “solicited and took bribes from Vietnamese immigrants.”
In one case, she took $1,000 from an alien seeking a green card. In another, she accepted 200 egg rolls from a foreigner seeking citizenship.
Nguyen worked out of USCIS’s Santa Ana office and, according to the FBI, was put on leave after eight years there.
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Photo: Eric Risberg/AP
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