Husband and wife set up sham marriages between U.S. citizens and immigrants, feds allege

A husband-and-wife team masterminded a sham marriage conspiracy, pairing foreign-born immigrants in Brooklyn and Staten Island with American citizens willing to marry them for cash, federal prosecutors allege.

William Jacobson, 60, and his wife, Marta Medvedeva, 68, would pair immigrants with potential spouses, provide bogus paperwork and train them on how to fool officials during immigration interviews, the feds allege. They’d charge foreign nationals about $30,000, and pass some of that money off to the citizens they were marrying, prosecutors said.

Federal agents arrested the couple Tuesday. Jacobson, a U.S. citizen by birth, lives in Brooklyn. Medvedeva, a Ukranian native who became a citizen in 2014 after marrying Jacobson in 2008, lives in Queens.

FBI agents started wiretapping Jacobson’s phone in November — a month after an informant wired for video and sound met with the couple in Brooklyn and offered to marry an immigrant woman for $5,000, according to court documents.

Read more: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-metro-sham-marriage-ring-busted-20190129-story.html