The U.S District Court for the NMI has sentenced a woman to a one-year probation after she pleaded guilty to forging a visa application. <\/p>\n
During her hearing last week, U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona sentenced Svetlana M. Maala to one-year probation after she pleaded guilty to forging a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services notice form.<\/p>\n
The court also imposed a $100 special assessment fee on Maala. <\/p>\n
Pursuant to her sentence, Maala will remain released, but her passport will be forwarded to immigration authorities. <\/p>\n
According to court documents, Maala voluntarily signed a plea agreement back in April and in doing so, Maala pleaded guilty to one count of fraud and misuse of visa.<\/p>\n
As part of the plea agreement, the U.S. government agreed not to file additional charges against her.<\/p>\n
The U.S. government, through assistant U.S. Attorney Garth Backe, said with the charges filed against her, Maala faced a possible maximum penalty of not more than 10 years imprisonment; a fine not to exceed $250,000; not more than a three-year term of supervised release; and a $100 special penal assessment. <\/p>\n
The plea agreement stated that back in June 7, 2018, Maala, a Philippine national, knowingly counterfeited and altered a form 1-797 by sending another individual’s form 1-797 to a second individual in the Philippines, and requested that it be photoshopped to show that it belonged to her.<\/p>\n
In her plea agreement, Maala admitted to knowing that the form 1-797 was not hers and was intending to use it as proof of her eligibility to stay and work in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S District Court for the NMI has sentenced a woman to a one-year probation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":331080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350377","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}