Federal prosecutors say a Massachusetts woman built a decade-long sham marriage operation that pulled in $6 million helping illegal immigrants chase legal status, then poured the cash into another country while drawing food aid here.
U.S. Attorney Leah Foley stood at Boston’s Moakley Federal Courthouse on Oct. 21, 2025, and laid out the case against Jennifer Gonzalez, a 43-year-old U.S. citizen prosecutors call the ringleader of a long-running marriage fraud scheme.
According to the Justice Department, Gonzalez arranged phony marriages between American citizens and illegal immigrants across Massachusetts for more than a decade, charging fees that reached $40,000 a couple and staging as many as 20 ceremonies a year. Fox News reported the arrests and Foley’s account of the alleged conspiracy.
Gonzalez, her 31-year-old secretary Amara Pugh, Jessica Tavares, and two other conspirators were arrested Wednesday morning. Erica Daniels, 29, and Jaylin Hill, 26, were also named in the alleged ring. Hill was already locked in state prison on a gun offense.
Foley put a hard number on the take.
"This conspiracy netted her $6 million during the course of the alleged scam,"
she said.
Prosecutors say the business model was simple and brazen. Female employees were allegedly paid to marry Gonzalez’s clients. Marriages could last years, end in divorce, then restart with a new pairing as early as a month later. Gonzalez herself allegedly entered a sham marriage.
Court records shared by the Justice Department include ceremony photos. One shows Tavares marrying an illegal immigrant from Brazil in May 2018. Another shows Daniels marrying an illegal immigrant from Brazil in August 2024.
The Washington Examiner reported federal prosecutors charged Gonzalez and five others in the Massachusetts fraud ring, with counts that include conspiracy to harbor immigrants, harboring immigrants, conspiracy to commit marriage fraud, and marriage fraud, a scheme described as facilitating hundreds of sham marriages over more than a decade.
Foley said the money did not stay put in the United States.
"She bragged that she invested her ill-gotten proceeds in businesses and property in the Dominican Republic, which she repeatedly referred to as 'my country.'"
And she drove the point home:
"Miss Gonzalez got rich off selling the American dream, all the while investing her money in another country,"
Foley told reporters. Prosecutors say Gonzalez’s stated aim included giving her children land in the Dominican Republic.
A cooperating witness working with federal law enforcement recorded interactions in which Gonzalez allegedly walked through the scheme. She believed the witness was an illegal immigrant, prosecutors said.
In those remarks, Gonzalez allegedly called Massachusetts “so special” because it is a sanctuary state where “illegal aliens get a lot of help as an immigrant.” That is not a slogan from activists. It is how the accused organizer described her marketplace, per Foley’s account of the recording.
The operation did not end on a moral conversion. Foley said Gonzalez told the witness she stopped the phony marriages at the end of 2024 because President Donald Trump was returning to office, and that the scheme shut down entirely in 2025 after immigration enforcement became “a little harsh.”
When the rules tightened, the alleged product line dried up. When the rules were loose, the alleged sales thrived.
Prosecutors did not stop at the marriage fees. Foley said Gonzalez applied for and received SNAP benefits, the federal food aid program, from 2019 through 2026, totaling more than $124,000.
The applications, Foley charged, left out the income that mattered and the people under her roof.
"She did not list her income from her sham marriage business and did not list anyone else in her household, not the illegal alien she married and not the father of her children, who she referred to as her husband,"
Foley said.
If those allegations hold, taxpayers were funding groceries for a household that was already allegedly cashing in on immigration fraud at premium rates.
The Justice Department’s account spans more than ten years of alleged dealmaking in Massachusetts, fees up to $40,000, volume as high as 20 marriages a year, a $6 million haul, overseas investment, sanctuary-state marketing, a cooperating witness’s recordings, ceremony photos tied to Brazilian illegal immigrants, and a parallel SNAP claim topping $124,000. Six people were tied to the arrest announcement. Formal charge papers, full docket numbers, and any defense response were not detailed in the initial public account.
Foley’s office framed the conduct as profit dressed up as opportunity, status for sale, benefits on the side, and capital parked where she called home. Gonzalez and the others are entitled to their day in court. The allegations themselves describe a market that treated U.S. legal status like inventory and treated Massachusetts’ protective posture as a selling point.
Open borders rhetoric and sanctuary branding do not stay in speeches. They show up in the sales pitch of people accused of turning American paperwork into a private revenue stream, and the bill still lands with the public.
