Benigno Ilo Mettao, a 27-year-old man who pleaded guilty to lying to a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer in connection with his sham marriage to a Chinese national, was slapped with a three-year probation sentence.<\/p>\n
At a sentencing hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona also directed Mettao to perform 50 hours of community service, not possess and use a controlled substance, participate in a substance abuse treatment program, and refrain from consuming any alcoholic beverages, among other conditions.<\/p>\n
Mettao was ordered to immediately pay $100 in special assessment fee after sentencing.<\/p>\n
Assistant U.S. attorney Russell Lorfing, counsel for the U.S. government, recommended a sentence of probation and no prison time\u2014the low end of the sentencing guidelines range.<\/p>\n
Attorney Michael Dotts, the court-appointed counsel for Mettao, recommended the same. The U.S. Probation Officer Margarita Wonenberg also recommended the same.<\/p>\n
Mettao pleaded guilty to false statement. The offense carries a maximum penalty of a five-year prison term, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year supervised release.<\/p>\n
In an interview with a USCIS officer on May 25, 2011, Mettao said he lived in San Antonio and that he lived with Bao Qin Ding, both of which were untrue.<\/p>\n
Last July, Mettao was among the witnesses that the U.S. government called to the witness stand in the jury trial of Qiong Lu Pua, a woman charged with three others for conspiring in a fraudulent marriage solely in order for two of them to obtain green cards.<\/p>\n
Pua\u2019s co-defendants were Ding, Zhenging Lu, Ba, and Norma Nekaifes. Mettao was charged for the same conduct in a separate indictment.<\/p>\n
Pua was found guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Nekaifes and Mettao pleaded guilty. Defendants Lu and Ding are believed to have already fled to China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Benigno Ilo Mettao, a 27-year-old man who pleaded guilty to lying to a U.S. Citizenship…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[4184,3057,6282,5029],"class_list":["post-211754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-attorney-michael-dotts","tag-bao-qin-ding","tag-norma-nekaifes","tag-qiong-lu-pua"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211754\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}