ICEd

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has accepted the consent to disbarment of an attorney charged with offenses described in this NPR post

Raphael Sanchez, a chief counsel for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been charged with stealing immigrants’ identities.

 Raphael Sanchez devised a scheme to use the immigrants’ identities in order to defraud financial institutions including American Express, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, according to the filing, which was entered in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

The filing cites an example of a communication by Sanchez with intent to defraud. It describes an email sent in April 2016 from Sanchez’s work email to his Yahoo account, containing an energy bill addressed to a Chinese national identified only as R.H. The email also included a photo of R.H.’s U.S. permanent resident card and a copy of the biographical page from his Chinese passport. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Sanchez used R.H’s information to pay the energy bill.

Sanchez is scheduled to appear in court Thursday. The AP explains that the charging document in Sanchez’s case is used when the defendant has waived his right to be indicted by a grand jury, indicating that a plea agreement is likely

Sanchez resigned from the agency on Monday, The Associated Press reports. He is charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft, occurring between October 2013 and October 2017.

His resignation statement -reflecting his guilty plea – should be linked here. (Mike Frisch)