Heartbroken immigrants including Tongans have been testifying in Sacramento federal court against Helaman Hansen, a charismatic businessman who allegedly persuaded them to pay to join his phony adult adoption scheme, prosecutors said.
Hansen, 64, has been charged with 16 counts of fraud and two counts of encouraging illegal immigration for financial gain, according to U.S. District Judge Morrison England.
Hansen and his agents, who operated in such far-flung locales as Tonga and Hawaii, allegedly charged undocumented immigrants between $150 and $10,000 each on the false promise that they’d become U.S. citizens after adoption.
Sacbee reports the victims, some of them as old as 50, were also promised tax identification numbers, birth certificates, Social Security numbers and, ultimately, U.S. passports.
No one adopted through Hansen’s program, which he called the “Americans Helping America Chamber of Commerce,” won citizenship, said assistant U.S. attorneys André M. Espinosa and Katherine T. Lydon. According to U.S. law, only undocumented immigrants under age 16 can win citizenship after being legally adopted by a U.S. citizen.
Hansen has pleaded not guilty and is out on $250,000 bail. One of his attorneys, Federal Defender Timothy Zindel, told the jury that his client suffers from bipolar “grandiosity” and thought he was “acting in good faith, not for financial gain and didn’t encourage anyone to stay in the U.S. illegally.”
“This is a person who is very inspired but is mentally ill,” Zindel said. “Psychologists call his ideas ‘grandiose.’ ”
Hansen worked throughout the South Pacific and Australia before he won the diversity lottery and was granted a green card. He became a U.S. citizen in 2006.
Sui Winn, a New Zealander living in San Jose, said Hansen talked about creating a Polynesian cultural center and a community outreach program to help immigrants. Zindel, his attorney, said Hansen was born on a boat traveling between Tonga and New Zealand. “It sounded very appealing,” Winn said. “He was very charismatic.”
The trial continues in Sacramento.