Immigrant Aid Scam Alleged : Residency: Police arrest an Alhambra woman accused of selling documents that were either nonexistent or fraudulent.

An Alhambra woman who allegedly charged Asian immigrants thousands of dollars for residency documents that either never materialized or turned out to be fraudulent was arrested by Los Angeles police Tuesday.

Lo-Li V. Gregor placed advertisements in Chinese-language newspapers promising “equivalent status for U.S. citizenship” and “green card guarantee certificates” for immigrants, claiming she would acquire them through her “connections with the White House and other governmental officials,” according to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office.

Some victims never received any documents and others received phony certificates, Deputy City Atty. P. Greg Parham said. Parham placed the “known cumulative losses” of the six victims at $30,000.

Gregor, 46, operated the Hsin-Mei Investment & Immigration Co. out of offices on Wilshire Boulevard and in Alhambra. She was arrested early Tuesday and arraigned on 15 criminal counts--six counts of misdemeanor grand theft and nine counts of making false and misleading statements.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is also investigating allegations that Gregor sold fraudulent immigration documents for $2,500 apiece, along with contracts guaranteeing their worth, said John Brechtel, INS assistant district director of investigations in Los Angeles.

“She’s passing out cards that say, ‘President Bush’s Executive Order ID Card,’ ” Brechtel said. The cards refer to a 1990 executive order extending the visas of Chinese students in the wake of the Tian An Men Square massacre.

Gregor’s victims included Minh Duc Voong, a Vietnamese legal resident of Massachusetts who paid Gregor $4,700 to help him gain citizenship and bring his mother and brother to the United States, according to the city attorney’s office.

The majority of immigrants buying documents from Gregor are from China, the city attorney’s office said. Beginning July 1, eligible Chinese can begin adjusting their immigration status to qualify for benefits under the Chinese Student Protection Act of 1992.

The act applies only to students who were in the United States from the 1989 student uprising to October, 1992. A limited number of applicants will be granted permanent residence status.

Gregor’s ads, however, have perpetuated rumors that immigrants need only arrive in the United States and apply for a green card before the July 1 deadline.

“Don’t wait until July 1 to get your green card, because by that time all the quota will be gone,” one ad says.

Authorities said one 75-year-old Chinese woman paid Gregor $3,000 for what Gregor called “equivalent status for U.S. citizenship,” but never received any documents, while another Los Angeles woman paid Gregor $14,500 to bring her family over from China.

In other promotional material distributed by her company, Gregor falsely claimed to have been involved in drafting the Chinese Protection Act and boasted of having “good connections with the White House and other governmental officials,” the city attorney’s office said.

The city attorney’s office has been investigating Gregor since in November, Parham said.

The other five victims listed in the complaint are from Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, Parham said.

Gregor placed her ads in several Chinese periodicals, including the World Daily and the Chinese Daily News, Parham said.

At least four students from China who had received “green card guarantee certificates” prepared by Gregor called the Chinese Daily News to complain in November but were reluctant to talk to law enforcement officials, said an editor who asked not to be identified.

The paper pulled Gregor’s ad, he said. “A lot of people are waiting for the INS regulations. Now it’s becoming more and more clear that they may not qualify, so they just think why not try to pay the money,” he said.

Gregor’s arrest sheds light on a lucrative scam becoming more and more common as Chinese immigrants scramble to leave for the United States, according to immigrant advocates and law enforcement officials.

“It’s very rampant,” said Hiram Kwan, a Los Angeles immigration attorney. “I had one client that paid as high as $18,000 for a false document. I heard of another individual who paid $350,000. (The consultants) hold themselves out as providing immigration services. Some are travel agents, some are insurance agents.”

One unrelated case being investigated by the Sheriff’s Department involves a Chinese couple living in Culver City who paid $65,000 for documentation that would indicate they had entered the country legally.

In an elaborate series of transactions, the suspect promised that a contact in the INS would provide the documentation, and took the couple to a San Gabriel Valley INS office, where they met a woman posing as an INS employee.

“We do know there are attorneys involved out there in the (Chinese) community, and others representing themselves as attorneys, saying they can get these documents, saying they have people in the INS, and in the Department of Motor Vehicles,” said Sgt. Thomas Budds, supervisor of the Sheriff’s Department’s Asian Organized Crime Unit.