Thai Marriage Scam Busted in Seattle

Stories here and here.

Does anyone here know a chain of restaurants in Seattle called Thai Ginger? There are five of them. The owner was paying her staff, male and female alike, US$10,000 to $20,000 to marry her relatives so they could live there. Too bad for her that they tried to arrange one of the marriages with an undercover cop. She’s looking at 35 years.

Do many people get away with this sort of thing? I always thought the authorities were on the look-out.

Man, I love Thai Ginger- they’ve got an incredible crab pad thai. That’s just so weird.

On Edit: I always ate at the one in Redmond Town Center, which was pretty high-end.

Huh. I’ve eaten at the Factoria location twice, and it was just OK both times. Out of curiosity, though I started reading customer reviews of that location and whew! TONS of complaints about terrible service and getting sick from the food.

It does happen, when I lived in Miami (1994-8) I met several people in arranged marriages and got offers to arrange one for me.

In Spain we’ve already had several cases of arranged marriages but, much worse imo, cases of forged marriages, where some woman suddenly finds out she’s officially married to some Ghanian she hasn’t met in her life.

Guess those prices helped pay the “spouses’” $20,000. :smiley:

I’m guessing more often than you think.

Many years ago, I had the mis-fortune to get involved with a young lady. I thought she “was the one”, despite our different ethnicities. (did I spell that right? Ah, who cares? You get the idea…) I had dreams of a wonderful life, white picket fence, blah blah blah…

She returned from a “family vacation” married to some scumbag just so he could get into the States. Turns out this was a regular pasttime for this little “family”.

What really hurts is the time I wasted with her. :mad: Can’t get that back!

I know they’re super strict at the US Embassy in Bangkok. On any given day, there are about 2000 Thais just trying to get a regular visa, not to mention marriage interviews. I’ve heard horror stories about “The Interview” for couples where the wife is Thai and the American husband is taking her to live in the US. My wife and I have never had a problem with the embassy here or Immigration in the US, but then she’s only applied for 10-year visas; we’ve never tried moving to the US.

The British Embassy is much worse by all accounts. Still, considering just the cases I personally know who were trying to scam, that’s probably a good thing.

I once dated a woman who was most definitely not “the one.” We were clearly both in it for the sex. And she was safe – she was married to a guy simply so he could get citizenship. In fact, they’d only met once.

The mandatory 30 month or whatever it was length of the marriage was about to end, meaning she’d be free to marry again, just about the time she developed real feelings for me. I was so out of there!

Wait till Lou Dobbs finds out about this!