Filipino couple in US to get 215 years for hiring illegal aliens

CHICAGO – A Filipino couple, who owned a health care agency, face sentencing of up to 215 years in prison for bringing in to the United States illegal aliens, mostly from the Philippines. Wilfredo Tiongco Ngo, 51, and his wife, Maria Teresa Lamayo Ngo, 49, co-owners of A-Plus Planning Services in Orange County in California, also face a stiff fine of $10.75 million or “twice the gross gain or gross loss resulting from the offenses, which ever is greatest." Sentencing has been scheduled for September 21 by Judge David O. Carter of the US District Court of Central District of California in Los Angeles. The couple were charged in August last year with a four-count indictment, including: 1. Inducing aliens to reside in the United States; 2. Knowingly employing illegal aliens; 3. Knowingly harboring illegal aliens; and 4. Counseling persons to engage in marriage fraud. When they were arraigned by US Magistrate Judge Marc L. Goldman last August 25, 2008, the Ngo's and their co-accused, Gicela Sarabia, 43, pleaded not guilty of the charges against them. Last month, however, the couple pleaded guilty of Count No. 1 as part of a plea bargain. Sarabia, who was charged with inducing aliens to reside in the US and knowingly hiring illegal aliens, has not yet copped a plea. It was not known if the Philippine Consulate in Los Angeles was advised by US immigration authorities of the arrest of the Ngos and the couple's right to seek help from the Philippine Consulate as mandated by the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of which both the Philippines and the United States are signatories. The Ngos are Philippine citizens. A-Plus Senior Planning Services is a private health care agency that provides basic care to the elderly in assisted-living facilities in Orange County since January 2005. It has 200 employees, half of them undocumented. It has 65 employees, 20 with non-immigrant visas, with denied political asylum, engaged in fraudulent sham marriage or had been previously ordered deported. The agency was originally named Better Care Solutions. When the company was audited, it changed its name to A-Plus Senior Planning Services. The agreement was agreed and accepted by Mieke I. Biesheuvel, assistant US attorney on behalf of Thomas P. O’Brien, US attorney for the Central District of California, and Robert A. Van Hoy, counsel for defendant Maria Teresa Lamayo Ngo, and Mark W. Fredrick, counsel for Wilfredo Tiongco Ngo. The alleged illegal activity of A-Plus was found out when two Filipino caregivers filed unemployment claims in July and October of 2006 with the California Employment Development Division. Better Care Solutions was later discovered not paying unemployment insurance from 2004 to 2007, employment-training taxes, disability insurance and personal income (state) tax, which resulted in two separate tax liens totaling $124,000. When interviewed by US immigration agents, Mr. Ngo said what he did was a “cultural thing. He wanted his people to eat and send money to their families in the Philippines. We are not harboring terrorists here." - GMANews.TV