Latina Actress Pleads Guilty in “Sham Marriage” Case

Posted January 28, 2011 Updated on January 28, 2011 at 4:44 pm

A Mexico City-born actress-model whoever test on fees of doing a marriage that is”green-card ended in a hung jury pleaded accountable Friday to federal costs of lying to immigration officials.

Maria Fernanda Romero Martinez, 28, of Westwood — whom makes use of the phase title Fernanda Romero — and Kent Ross, additionally 28, of Park Los Angeles Brea, had been initially faced with federal wedding fraudulence and making false statements during her application for the card that is green.

Their test in l . a . federal court finished final September in a mistrial after jurors reported that deliberations had become too aggressive to carry on.

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Since that time, Romero and Ross decided to just just just what prosecutors call a “package deal” by which both would plead bad to separate your lives but similar fees of lying to federal officials investigating their wedding.

In court Friday, U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real asked Romero if she ended up being certainly responsible.

“Yes, i will be, your honor,” Romero replied.

Real set April 25 for Romero’s sentencing. He additionally set a Feb. 4 hearing on Ross’ expected plea that is guilty.

The fees carry a optimum of 5 years in jail, possible fines of $250,000 and 36 months of supervised launch for every defendant, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Left said.

The situation hinged on whether Romero paid Ross to marry her and then lied concerning the relationship to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration solutions so she could obtain permanent resident status.

Prosecutors claim the set had been residing in split homes and dating other folks once they tied the knot.

” It in fact was a fraudulence and a sham . entirely to get a card that is green” Left told the jury just last year, arguing that the couple never ever lived together nor had any intention of accomplishing therefore, and therefore Romero paid Ross $5,000 to marry her.

Defense lawyer Michael T. Shannon countered that after the couple got hitched in 2005, these were “head over heels in love. june”

The research began whenever certainly one of Romero’s ex-boyfriends, fashion professional professional professional photographer Markus Klinko, alleged in a unrelated lawsuit that the wedding of Romero and Ross had been bogus.

Romero has starred in tv shows and films, including “the attention” alongside Jessica Alba in 2008 plus in the soap that is mexican “Eternamente Tuya” (“Forever Yours”). She’s got additionally hosted the Univision Spanish-language reality show “Control.”

Ross described himself once the manager of a pizza restaurant and a musician that is working played in a band called The Electrical Uh-Oh.

Romero and Ross declined comment after Friday’s hearing.

That’s an event that reads real for survivors whom didn’t think these people were in danger. Beatriz describes, “Sometimes we be in a bubble of the global world of ‘I’m safe.’ Because — perhaps I’m well-educated, or even I’m safe because we reside in a beneficial neighbor hood … unfortunately, we have been located in a rape tradition, for which none of us are really safe.” Sexual attack can occur to anyone.

Beatriz, who had been also an administrator producer regarding the Light of this Moon, states she’s acutely grateful and proud to be playing not just very good Latina figures, but quirky and odd forms of Latinas. These roles were often very one-dimensional: she jokes about stumbling on shows like the ’80s sitcom I Married Dora — about a rich white man marrying his Hispanic maid — and being excited, because at least it had a Latina lead in the past!

Happily, contemporary functions are more multifaceted, just like Beatriz herself — a sensible, Dolly Parton-loving, queer girl with ferocious wit, and a skill for strange voices. Latinas are only because diverse as some other selection of individuals, and Beatriz claims representing that complexity in movie as well as on television is key.

Apart from her two envelope-pushing functions as Bonnie and Rosa, the actress has starred in You’re Not You (opposite Hilary Swank and Josh Duhamel), in Netflix’s Pee-wee’s Big Holiday, plus in Ice Age: Collision Course.

This present year, fans won’t wish to miss Beatriz into the heartwarming, hilarious, and whimsical christianmingle ekşi feminine friend film Half Magic, now in theaters. The movie, written and directed by Heather Graham, does not shy far from the subject of empowered feminine sex.

“It’s really sweet, it is actually sweet, and a tiny bit raunchy,” Beatriz says. Seems like our types of film.