The Cuban Criminal Pipeline, Part III: Congress reacts

SunSentinel.com

By Sally Kestin, Megan O'Matz and William E. Gibson

Photography and videography by Taimy Alvarez

Members of Congress want to know who pockets the stolen U.S. dollars that flow to Cuba, whether the Cuban government is behind the crime, and if American policy makes it too easy.

Those questions are even more crucial now that President Obama is moving toward normalizing relations with the Communist nation, lawmakers said in response to a Sun Sentinel investigation that documented a revolving door of crooks and cash to the island.
Criminals are exploiting a unique immigration law, the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, that grants near-automatic entry to Cubans who make it to U.S. soil, the Sun Sentinel found. Even Cuban Americans in Congress, traditionally staunch supporters of preserving the preferential treatment the U.S. affords to Cubans, say some change is needed.

“Should we, as American citizens, look the other way while people abuse a law that is one of the most generous in the history of the world?” said U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a newly elected Republican and a Cuban American from Kendall. “I think this policy is deeply flawed, and we have to find a way to reform it.”
Rings of Cuban immigrants have capitalized on America’s open door and its strained relations with Cuba by engaging in high-dollar frauds and theft, shuttling back and forth with money plundered in the U.S. and escaping to Cuba to evade justice.
“We don’t want to have a situation that makes it easy for people who are involved in crime rings in Cuba to come here, or who are sent here by crime rings, or the Castro regime ... to come, commit crimes and then travel back freely with all of the money that they stole, oftentimes from taxpayers,” said Rep. Ted Deutch, a West Boca Democrat who serves on the House Foreign Affairs committee.

Rep. Carlos Curbelo

Curbelo has no evidence but said he believes the criminal network in the U.S. is the work of the Castro government. It is a suspicion shared by some colleagues in Congress.
“I believe it's very likely that the Cuban government is sponsoring all of this activity and is profiting from it,” Curbelo said.
Congress should investigate that possibility, Deutch said. “We ought to dig to find out where [the money’s] going when it gets there,” he said.
One U.S. senator tried in 2011 and got nowhere.
Concerned about Cuban immigrants committing Medicare fraud, Sen. Charles Grassley asked in a hearing whether Cuban officials may be involved or may have facilitated fraud. He followed up with a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, tried unsuccessfully in 2011 to investigate the prevalence of Cuban immigrants in Medicare fraud and possible Cuban government connections. AP Photo.

“It is already concerning that organized crime has moved into health care fraud because it is so lucrative,” wrote Grassley, an Iowa Republican who served on the Judiciary Committee. “It is even more troubling if foreign government officials are also facilitating or directing fraud.”
In response, an assistant attorney general wrote only that federal agencies coordinate “where appropriate” with international criminal investigations. The letter did not answer the senator’s questions about the number of Cubans involved in fraud or how long they had been in the country, saying federal agencies that investigate fraud do not track that information.
But the government does have that data. Mining federal bookings records, the Sun Sentinel found that Cuba natives are far and away the leaders in health-care fraud.
Though they comprise less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, they make up 41 percent of the health-care fraud arrests nationwide, the analysis shows. The next largest group, defendants born in the U.S., represent 29 percent of the arrests, followed by Nigerians and Russians at 3 percent each.

Snitches and spies

The reach of Cuban criminal rings extends well beyond Medicare fraud. Immigrants from the island have specialized in a series of lucrative economic crimes, ripping off auto insurers, credit-card companies and retailers, often in highly organized, astonishingly brazen heists.

The crimes typically carry light sentences, and criminals who don’t want to risk jail time can return to Cuba with little fear of being extradited.
Digging through hundreds of court documents, the Sun Sentinel found references to possible Cuban government connections:
⚫ The accused leader of a Cuban drug and smuggling ring based in Southwest Florida, Ernesto Feito, “had a state badge as an international security officer from Cuba” and was “able to move people in and out of Cuba via fishing boats without any problem,” an informant told investigators in 2005. The operation was “sanctioned and encouraged and aided by Fidel Castro and Cuban governmental spies.” A fugitive for six years, Feito, now 49, was captured in 2013, but prosecutors cited a lack of evidence and dropped the case.

⚫ An informant who helped prosecutors win convictions in a South Florida ring that billed Medicare more than $56 million told a state fraud investigator in 2007 that the organizer was a Cuban intelligence officer. Mario Aleman “was an agent for G-2 Security Forces” and had his brother transport up to $180,000 at a time back to the island, said informant Jorge O’Reilly. Aleman, now 53, returned to Cuba and was never charged.
O’Reilly “was credible, very credible,” investigator Jack Calvar told the Sun Sentinel. “I couldn’t get any information out of Cuba.”
⚫ A defendant in a credit-card fraud and fuel-theft crew on Florida’s west coast refused to testify against a leader of that ring because, he told a detective in February, the man’s brother was a Cuban intelligence officer who “would hurt his family” in Cuba.
⚫ Convicted Medicare fraudster Renier V. Rodriguez, now 63, was a lieutenant colonel in Cuba and director of a military school. He regularly traveled to Cuba after coming to the U.S., but his lawyer told the Sun Sentinel he was homeless at the time of the fraud and used as a pawn by others.
Cuba denies training or sending people to the U.S. to steal. “The Cuban government in no way encourages that,” said a high-ranking Cuban official who spoke on condition he not be named. “There is no complicity.”
Members of Congress are not convinced.
Immigrants arrive seemingly trained on how to commit fraud, said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican and son of Cuban immigrants.

Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, left, Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have indicated a willingness to re-examine the Cuban Adjustment Act.

“You have to wonder how people who just arrived here from Cuba within a very short period of time have it all set up, have a very sophisticated system to defraud, and as soon as they get caught, they go back,” he said. The illicit money in Cuba “is not going to the people. This is going to the regime’s institutions.”
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Cuban-American Republican from Miami, said she is not aware of “any instructions that the regime is giving to people, but it does call attention to the fact that a lot of these folks are coming, recently arrived from Cuba, and are committing these crimes and then they are on the lam back in Cuba with millions of dollars.”

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A law unto themselves

Cubans are the only nationality with their own immigration law. The Cuban Adjustment Act, passed nearly 50 years ago to provide an escape for those fleeing communism, presumes Cubans to be political refugees and does not require them to prove persecution or seek asylum.
Unlike other immigrant groups, Cubans are allowed into the country without visas. They’re eligible for financial assistance and fast-tracked for legal residency and citizenship, regardless of how they arrive or why they left Cuba.

The open-door policy provides no mechanism for the U.S. to check the backgrounds of many Cubans arriving at the border. Even with Cubans immigrating through legal channels, such as a family reunification program for immediate relatives, background information is limited.
“The reality is with Cuba it is very, very difficult to determine if they have a criminal history,” said Antonio Revilla, a Miami attorney and former immigration prosecutor. “As far as our knowing what’s transpired in Cuba, what kind of people they are in Cuba, we have limited knowledge.”
The law allows Cuban immigrants to become permanent residents after just a year, travel back to Cuba and legally re-enter the U.S.

Many are now going back and forth like Cuba is their winter home, said Mauricio Claver-Carone, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Cuba Democracy Advocates, which supports stronger measures against the Cuban government.
“There is a new category of Cubans that are coming for other reasons that are not political. That’s fine, and we welcome them,” he said, but they “should play by the same rules as everybody else in the world.”
Immigrants from other countries who don’t have visas must prove political persecution to stay in the United States. Those who succeed jeopardize that status if they return to their home countries before they become U.S. citizens.
Cuban immigrants who return to the island as soon as they obtain a green card “undermine the argument that they have a legitimate fear of persecution,” Curbelo said.
“I don’t think any American citizen can support the systematic abuse of a generous immigration law,” the freshman Congressman said. “It’s certainly very demoralizing to people from other countries who would like to come to our country and have a more prosperous future and are not able to do so.”
As Congress takes up broader immigration reform, Curbelo said, “I think we certainly have to take a hard look at the Cuban Adjustment Act.
“I’m not for eliminating the Cuban Adjustment Act, but we certainly need to tighten it,” he said.

Ros-Lehtinen said she doesn’t believe the act facilitates crime in the U.S. but said “it’s not supposed to be as a ticket in and out ... to say that you’re persecuted, you get to speed up your paperwork, but then you’re able to go back and forth.”
The law “should be used only for those who are fleeing persecution,” she said. “I’m not in favor of getting rid of it because tomorrow there will be someone who will be worthy of that designation, so what we need to do is cut down on its abuse.”

Influential voting bloc

The Cuban delegation in Congress, an influential voting bloc, has stopped past attempts to repeal the law, despite arguments that it is unfair to other immigrants and no longer necessary.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wants to keep the Cuban Adjustment Act but cut down on its abuses.

The act “has been an anachronism” for decades, pitting one deserving group of immigrants against others, said Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in the Clinton administration. “It’s always caused controversy over why do you treat Haitians one way and Cubans another way?”
Mike Kopetski, a former Congressman from Oregon, felt a backlash when he tried to overturn the law in 1994, calling it indefensible and overly generous.
“A lot of the representatives from South Florida in particular were very upset with me,” said Kopetski, now an international trade consultant. “I was frustrated by the fact it was Florida and led by Cuban Americans in Florida who were dictating our Cuba policy in this area when this is a national policy.”

In recent years, some Cuban Americans in Congress have become more open to modifying the law over concern about the increased back-and-forth by new immigrants and criminals.
A 2012 proposal would have revoked the legal residency of immigrants admitted under the law who returned to Cuba before becoming a U.S. citizen. The bill’s sponsor, former Rep. David Rivera, a Cuban American from Miami, noted that fugitives who had stolen billions from Medicare and Medicaid “live in Cuba protected by the Cuban government.”
The proposal stalled. During one committee hearing, opponents said it divided Cuban families and unfairly punished those who wanted to visit sick or dying relatives on the island.

Claver-Carone, who supported the bill, told the Sun Sentinel it would have resulted in a “huge drop” in frauds and other crimes by Cuban immigrants in the United States.

Revilla said he does not believe the law is responsible for crimes committed by Cuban immigrants.

“I don’t think Cubans are coming here saying, ‘I’m going to come here, become a resident, then commit a crime,’” he said. “It’s human nature, just like Americans commit crime.”

Time for reform

Momentum for reform has been building with increased openness that began five years ago.

The Obama administration in 2009 reversed rules limiting trips and money Cuban Americans could take to the island. And in August 2013, the State Department extended travel visas for Cubans to visit the U.S. from six months to five years and allowed multiple trips.

Also in 2013, the Cuban government made it easier for its citizens to travel abroad, allowing them to stay in the U.S. for up to two years without losing their homes and benefits in Cuba.

Both countries expect increased travel once diplomatic relations are restored. Diaz-Balart said the U.S. must demand the return of fugitives hiding out in Cuba, which in published reports has expressed an unwillingness to do.

“It is unconscionable that the Obama administration would work out a deal with the anti-American, brutal Castro regime to ease sanctions, establish diplomatic relations, and return three convicted spies while doing nothing to bring these criminals back to the United States,” he said.

Rep. Deutch said all U.S. policy toward Cuba should be re-examined.

“Now [immigrants] have the ability to go back and forth and they have the ability to take unlimited money,” he said. “It’s certainly important I think for us to take a look at the connection and the interaction between the existing law, the changes in policy and this increase in crime, and determine whether there might need to be some changes.”