They Staged Wedding After Wedding for a Decade. Feds Say It Was One of the Largest Marriage-Fraud Rings in U.S. History.
- 11 Charged naturalized U.S. citizens and one green-card holder indicted for allegedly running the marriage-fraud ring out of the New York area — DOJ, Aug. 12, 2026
- 1,000+ sham marriages the indictment says the ring arranged since 2016, staged across eight states plus Vanuatu and China — DOJ; Fox News
- $100,000 the top price foreign nationals allegedly paid for a sham marriage; U.S. citizen spouses were paid up to $30,000 in installments tied to green-card milestones — DOJ indictment
- Tens of Millions in dollars prosecutors say the network took in over its decade-long run — U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald
- 10 Years the maximum prison sentence each defendant faces on the most serious of two conspiracy counts — DOJ, Aug. 12, 2026
On August 12, 2026, federal prosecutors unsealed a two-count indictment charging 11 people — ten naturalized U.S. citizens and one green-card holder, most of Chinese origin — with allegedly running a marriage-fraud ring out of the New York area for nearly a decade. According to the Justice Department, the network staged more than 1,000 sham weddings since 2016, complete with hired officiants, photographers, rented venues, joint bank accounts, life-insurance policies, and prenuptial agreements — all to convince U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the marriages were real.
Attorney General Todd Blanche called it “a years-long, multimillion-dollar cottage industry to criminally assist people who would not, or legally could not, otherwise become citizens of the United States.” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald of the Southern District of New York put a number on it: “We believe this network took in tens of millions of dollars over its decade-long operation, making it one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in U.S. history.”
Note the hedge in both officials’ own words: “one of the largest,” not the largest, full stop. That distinction matters, and it is where this story ends up — after walking through how the scheme actually worked, who has been charged, and what the record really shows.
According to the indictment, the ring did not simply file paperwork claiming couples were married — it staged the appearance of real marriages start to finish. Foreign nationals, primarily Chinese citizens seeking green cards, allegedly paid up to $100,000 apiece. U.S. citizens willing to marry a stranger were paid up to $30,000, in installments tied to immigration milestones, while recruiters who found willing citizen-spouses earned roughly $5,000 per referral. Prosecutors say three defendants — Amy Cheng, Xiao Mei Chan, and Gang Zheng — served as the operation’s core facilitators, marketing the scheme through word-of-mouth, social media, and paid ads.
The staging itself was elaborate: real wedding ceremonies with officiants, photographers, restaurant venues, and invited “guests”; joint bank and phone accounts opened to build a paper trail; life-insurance policies purchased naming each other as beneficiaries; prenuptial agreements waiving inheritance rights, filed specifically so couples could later divorce cleanly once a green card issued. Couples were allegedly coached ahead of their USCIS interviews on how to answer questions about a marriage that, per the indictment, never had any relationship behind it at all.
Homeland Security Investigations’ acting executive associate director, John Condon, framed the scheme in blunter terms: “As alleged, this decade-long scheme turned marriage fraud into an international business model arranging countless sham marriages and causing hundreds of fraudulent Green Card applications to be submitted to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.” That figure — hundreds of fraudulent applications actually filed with USCIS — is the more concrete measure of harm than the 1,000-marriage headline number, which counts every staged wedding the ring is accused of arranging, not every application that made it through the system.
USCIS Director Joseph Edlow tied the case to the agency’s broader enforcement posture: “USCIS will continue to expose fraud, defend the rule of law, and ensure immigration status is reserved for those who truly qualify.” The agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate worked the case alongside HSI Hudson Valley, the FBI’s Safe Streets Task Force, U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, and the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office — an unusually wide federal-local coalition for an immigration-fraud case, reflecting how long the operation had been running and how many jurisdictions it touched.
🚨 @AGToddBlanche announces the unsealing of an indictment charging 11 defendants with conspiring (over the course of more than a decade) to orchestrate more than 1,000 sham marriages to fraudulently obtain immigration status for foreign nationals, primarily citizens of China.
The eleven charged — Amy Cheng, Xiao Mei Chan, Christine Lu, Jing Yan Ye, Xiao Yan Chen, Gang Zheng, Anthony Cheng, Michelle Duenas, Angela Duenas, Sigrid Cetino, and Erika Johnson — were arrested and arraigned the same day in federal court in White Plains. The 21-page indictment charges each with two counts: conspiracy to commit marriage fraud and immigration document fraud, and conspiracy to encourage or induce the unlawful residence of aliens. The first carries up to five years in prison; the second, up to ten. All eleven have been charged, not convicted, and are presumed innocent unless and until a jury finds otherwise — the “alleged” in every outlet’s headline is doing real work here, not just legal boilerplate.
“Today's arrests have dismantled a central component of one of the largest marriage fraud schemes charged in United States history.”
U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald, SDNY · Aug. 12, 2026
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jake Sidransky and Reyhan Watson are prosecuting the case out of the White Plains Division of the Southern District of New York. No plea has been entered as of this writing, and no trial date has been set.
Every official quote in this story uses the same careful phrase: “one of the largest,” never “the largest.” That hedge holds up under scrutiny. By marriage count and geographic reach — more than 1,000 staged weddings across eight states, Vanuatu, and China — this does appear to be the largest such scheme on record. But by the number of people charged, it is not: a 2018 Houston-area case, also prosecuted by DOJ, charged 96 people in a roughly 150-marriage scheme priced at $50,000 to $70,000 per marriage — nearly nine times as many defendants, in a smaller ring.
By dollar volume, this case’s “tens of millions” plausibly exceeds the Houston case’s implied ceiling of roughly $10,500,000, though neither DOJ release gave an exact total for either case, so that comparison can’t be pinned to precise figures. What can be said cleanly: this is one of the largest marriage-fraud prosecutions in U.S. history by marriage count and revenue, and the largest known scheme built specifically around Chinese nationals seeking green cards — a real record, just not the unqualified one the headlines are chasing.
Eleven people are charged with running a decade-long ring that staged more than 1,000 sham marriages to help mostly-Chinese foreign nationals obtain green cards — complete with hired officiants, joint bank accounts, and coached USCIS interviews, for fees up to $100,000 per marriage. Prosecutors call it one of the largest marriage-fraud schemes in U.S. history, a claim that holds up by marriage count and dollar volume even though a 2018 Houston case charged far more defendants. All eleven are presumed innocent and face up to 10 years on the top count if convicted; no trial date has been set.
