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Sexual Blackmail at Immigration Services

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from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008, at 3:10 PM ET

Isaac Baichu works for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency as an "immigration screening officer." A few days before Christmas, he phoned a 22-year-old Colombian woman whose green card application he was reviewing and asked her to meet him—in his car. The woman and her American husband had met with Baichu in his New York office a few weeks earlier. Now Baichu explained that there were some problems with her record. He'd be parked on Queens Boulevard at noon.

The woman agreed to the meeting. As she settled into the passenger seat, Baichu, himself a naturalized immigrant from Guyana—he obtained his citizenship in 1991—got right to the point. In exchange for his help establishing lawful permanent residency, he said, "I want to have sex one or two times, that's all." He promised, "You'll get to like me, because I'm a nice guy." He also said he was "single" and wanted "to be friends." Perhaps, Baichu told her, when she and her husband visited Colombia, "I go with you. You hook me up with somebody nice." We know Baichu's precise words because the woman recorded the conversation on a digital video camera in her purse.

Then events took a nastier turn. According to an affidavit filed in criminal court last month by detective Joseph Brancaccio of the Queens district attorney's office (below and on the following page), Baichu "grabbed her by the arm" and insisted she "perform oral sex upon him, then and there." The woman pleaded, "Let me go because I tell my husband I come home." But Baichu refused and, restraining her physically, "placed his penis in her mouth." The charging document states that Baichu assured her that "it would only take a second and that he was very fast." He'd have to be; according to the New York Times, during the last three years alone Baichu "handled 8,000 green card applications."

Within days, the woman played the recording to both the district attorney and the Times. Baichu was charged with sexual misconduct, coercion, and receiving a "reward for official misconduct" (below). A criminal trial will begin in May. Currently, Baichu is suspended while the agency investigates. His lawyer told CNN, "We're denying any wrongdoing at the moment." The woman's immigration status, meanwhile, remains unresolved.

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hot document
entries
12
from: Bonnie Goldstein

Posted Tuesday, April 15, 2008, at 3:10 PM ET
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Bonnie Goldstein is a former special investigator to the U.S. Senate and investigative producer for ABC News.
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