The Washington Post reports that a Department of Homeland Security supervisor has pled guilty to accepting over $600, 000 in bribes in exchange for creating fraudulent documents to help Asian immigrants obtain U.S. citizenship.  Prosecutors say Robert Schofield issued fake documentation for hundreds of immigrants from his Fairfax County, Va. office for over 10 years.   

Schofield allegedly earned up to $10,000 per immigrant and employed a network of brokers who brought him immigrants needing citizenship or entry into the U.S.   At the time of his arrest, Schofield supervised a staff of nine at the DHS’ Washington District Office.  Here he had been the acting assistant director for examinations from 1998 to 2004.   

The brokers who located the immigrants for Schofield pocketed over $2.5 million from the scheme, in addition to the more than $600,000 they paid him, according to court documents.  One of those brokers, Chinese citizen Qiming Ye, was charged along with Schofield in June and pled guilty last month.  He would have testified against Schofield had the case gone to trial.  

Schofield was demoted one point for “conduct unbecoming a government employee,” the court documents say, and had had an “inappropriate relationship” with a woman connected to a DHS criminal probe.  When confronted about that relationship by DHS officials, Schofield fled to East Asia , where he made $36,000 worth of unauthorized purchases on his government-issued credit card.  

It remains unclear when Schofield returned to the U.S. , how the previous investigations ended and how Schofield became a supervisor when the new Department of Homeland Security took over INS’s functions in 2003.  As it stands, Schofield faced up to 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 23, 2007.

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