“Green Card Marriage — Will pay $300/month. Total $15, 000,” the Russian national living in Los Angeles wrote in an ad placed on the Craigslist website. “This is strictly platonic business offer, sex not involved.”

Just in case any would-be Romeos weren’t taking the hint, she added, “NOT required to live together.”

Kalinina’s direct approach was very attractive, drawing the attention not only of the man who would marry her, but also of agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After nearly two years of what federal prosecutors allege was a sham marriage, Kalinina and her 30-year-old husband, Benjamin C. Adams, were arrested last week at separate residences.

Prosecutors say Kalinina leased Adams a new Ford Mustang for his trouble.

She also took care of the wedding arrangements: Performing the ceremony was Dmitri Chavkerov, an Internet-ordained minister who also happened to be Kalinina’s live-in boyfriend.

“I’d say it’s a fairly blatant example of marriage fraud,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Curtis A. Kin, one of the prosecutors on the case.

Robert Schoch, special agent in charge of ICE investigations in Los Angeles, said it was the first criminal case he was aware of in which people had allegedly used the Internet to engineer a fraudulent marriage in hopes of obtaining a green card.

According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Kalinina began advertising in the personal ads section of Craigslist in October 2005.

She posted at least eight ads, most of them titled “Green Card Marriage — Will pay $300/month. Total $15,000.”

According to the court papers, ICE agents also obtained e-mails from Kalinina’s Google account in which she and Adams discussed their potential marriage.

“How long does it have to last for?” Adams allegedly asked, according to a Jan. 9, 2006, e-mail.

“Marriage will take 2-3 years (most likely 2),” Kalinina responded.

Adams then told Kalinina that he had bad credit and suggested she lease a car for him in exchange for agreeing to marry her, the complaint alleges. The two were married Feb. 17, 2006.

A month later, Kalinina leased Adams a 2006 Ford Mustang, the documents state. That April, the couple filed paperwork seeking to establish permanent residency for Kalinina.

When confronted by ICE agent’s months later, the documents state, Kalinina and her boyfriend — the man who performed the marriage ceremony — admitted that the marriage to Adams was a fraud intended to obtain a green card. Marrying her boyfriend would have done nothing to help her immigration status, because he is in the country illegally.

Attorney Dale Rubin, who is representing Kalinina, said his client has a pending asylum application but was concerned that it wouldn’t be granted before she was due to leave the country.

He said Kalinina didn’t know it was illegal to marry for a green card, which he said was evidenced by the blatant language in her ads.

“For some reason, if you’re from Russia, you think the way to get around a problem is to throw money at it,” he said.

January 19, 2008 18:47 IST
Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on Tuesday arrested 48 foreign exchange brokers & Felix Homogratus the owner of forexpeacearmy in connection with a probe into securities and currency fraud, according to a CNN/Money report.
The FBI swarmed on New York City’s Two World Financial Center shortly after 3 p.m. ET and took away the traders in handcuffs, people on the scene told CNNfn.
The building is mainly occupied by Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch, but Merrill Lynch was not home to the arrested brokers, CNN/Money said. “It’s currency fraud, securities fraud,” an agent at the scene of the arrests said.
FBI sources told CNN/Money that the Wall Street traders will be charged with swindling retail investors of an undisclosed amount of cash over the past year.
NBC reported the defendants scammed retail investors into thinking they were buying multimillion-dollar foreign exchange trades when it is not possible for those types of investors to participate in such deals. Among those arrested were three brokers at the inter-dealer brokerage ICAP. Seven employees of Madison Deane and Associates Inc were also arrested, CNN/Money added. At least two other firms were involved, sources said, adding none of the companies targeted were household names outside of the securities industry but are well known and regarded in the Wall Street community.

You can do this by reading what they have on their website, and by calling them on the telephone to see how quickly and how well they respond, or getting advice from the many chat rooms about Forex, including those provided by the broker. Although almost all Forex trading is done over the Internet nowadays, sometimes Internet connections don’t work, or the company’s trading platform isn’t working the way it should or the way you think it should, so it is very important that they also provide telephone service.
The most important criteria in selecting a Forex broker after assuring your self that they are reputable brokers is the trading platform, the currency pairs offered, and the spread, the difference between the bid/ask prices, which is how the Forex broker is compensated, and the best way to judge these criteria is to open practice accounts with several brokers, which most offer, and trade for about a month in each account. Practice accounts allow you to trade Forex using live market data and using the company’s software, but without using actual money. You must remember that when you place an order with the broker, your order cannot be seen by anyone else other than your broker—not even other brokers. All of your transactions are with the broker—not other traders; the broker develops the trading software, or, at least customizes it, you can be restricted from doing certain things that you might be accustomed to doing with stocks, for instance.
A good way to compare actual trading is to open real mini-accounts with several brokers. Because mini-accounts require very small deposits to open, most people should have no problem opening several accounts to see what their actual profits and losses are, broker fees, and responsiveness. This also helps if one of the brokers goes bankrupt. At least you won’t lose all of your money because you placed it with one broker. Despite many brokers claims to the contrary, trading foreign exchange successfully is not an easy thing to do. Forex trading is at best a risky business and at worst, a scammer’s dreams come true. As a general rule, it is best to avoid any companies claiming that Forex trading is easy, guarantees results or encourages you to make small deposits and use high leverages. Regardless of how well educated you are, investing a small sum in FX trading is likely to end in losses.
Some recent scammers who have been caught include: Lake Shore Asset Management, Forexbastards, ForexPeaceArmy, Felix Homogratus, Lake Dow and Ty Edwards, Ben Ouyang, Rashid Ghafoor, Adam, Tahir, Emerald Worldwide Holdings, Foreign Fund (First Bank), Equity Financial, Shasta, or Tech Traders,IBS/IMC, Kevin J. Steele Nawab Ali Khan Ali,Sun Platinum Worldwide Commodity orporation Graystone Browne Financial,Sterling Trading Group, Inc,STG Global Trading or QIX, Inc.A broker must be registered and reputable since there are innumerable scams involving Forex investment.

Before saying anything about this scammer, I want you to observe the following illusion that Felix has done here & there
Open the following website that owned by Felix http://www.wpips.com/
Scroll down till you reach the Testimonials, you will find someone called Juneed Khan saying “I’m up 1500 pips so far from July 15, 2007″
Now open this profile in MySpace http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=206013400
This is the profile of the of the same person in the Testimonials but with two different names
The Employees that are working with Felix:
1- RASHID GASHOR: He is working as messenger For Forex Bastards
He is Arabian but lives in United State open accounts with different brokers & try to make problems with those brokers like the following problems:
- Claiming that there is no money arrived after the withdrawal
- Recording & Editing the chats to be published in the forums
- Scalping
- Giving his account to other trader
- Cheating in credit cards
Rashid has been boasted several times & he never stops that he is now using fake characters in the forums with several fake emails & usernames
Always defending for Forex Bastards & scamming other brokers
2- Robert Grespi: He is working as publisher in the forums with different IDs like Pharaoh, deezee, DJDJ, theskyhy, DaveO, Vettah, Pipsgeek, Ilya Paniotov, musketeer, CeleronS, arturofield, trader, OzWizard, ForexGump, StandingCow, rajeev, Abundant1

11/5/07 – Our company just received a threatening email from Dmitri Chavkerov saying he will call the FBI and Police on our Operating Manager and Dmitri showed that he posessed his Home Address and Social Security Number which he threatened to post this outdated info on his fake review site Forexbastards.com …. Our Members and Managers are well insulated from this Pig

11/6/07 – We will be launching a new site Forexscammer.com it will be a site maintained by traders with the goal of debunking what is in our opinion false claims and bogus signal service, IB relationships and manipulated ratings system..

12/11/07 – We posted Official US Government Record and PDF of Complaint by the Government of Dmitri Chavkerov being busted on November 30, 2007 along with girlfriend Yuliya Kalinina also we noticed on Dmitri’s forum his posters are complaining about him not being around and on a supposed over extended vacation, we as well noticed that a post on his forum made by “Heinz” was censored by “ADMIN” in his post he had a link to this page.

12/12/07 – It appers Dmitri is up to his little tricks again apperantly he is posting on his forum under a different name (Upright Pip) that we are a scam and somehow connected to Centralpips.com I challange him or anyone else to find any connection with our Company and that company (Centralpips), you will not find one…… here is a quote from an email we recieved from him

” 6. Your business. I’ll be quite frank with you. I have some information to believe that you were behind centralpips.com, which was a scam, but I am definitely not sure about it.”

The problem, is that he will not show what this so called information is. So Dmitri why don’t you please show the world this information?

12/26/07 – Just put a new link up above titled “What Happened to Felix Homogratus?” when reading this something stood out in this article and it was the statement – (“It’s sad too that anyone who speaks out against Felix by posting an opinion of his services online gets greeted with emails of how the FBI is going to come and get them.”) – because oddly enough this is what he did to us threatening to phone the FBI if and local Police if we received one negative review on his Fake Review site.

Being once a Forex trader you will meet many problems concerning the trustworthy of the broker you are dealing with. Unfortunately there are people who use this point to attack well-guaranteed brokers with.

I’m going to show you what I’ve found after my search, for this issue concerns me a lot because I used to be a trader in Forex Market for 6 years and then I became to be IB with one of the greatest brokers in Forex Market, and I have passed through problems very similar to this.

During my Forex activity I have seen many swindlers whose target is to steal money but by cheating. One of them is called Rashid, he is Algerian but lives in US.

His work concentrated on opening accounts and operating it with Automated Expert Advisers in order to ensure his profit.

He cheated many brokers and took money not of his rightful possession.

Cases:

-          Claiming big withdrawal twice times & saying that the 1^st one didn’t arrive (By participation with his bank)

-          Threatening The brokers

-          Brokers’ Provocation is his job

-          Hacking the mails of customer services & send Factious mails to clients

-          Hacking Credit cards through ATMs of Banks

-          Saying bad mouth about brokers to make them lose their reputation

-          Allegation that he is introducing broker for AC-Markets, FXCM, FXDD, Interbanfx, MIG investment, Gain Capital

-          Exporting Drugs to the Middle East  

The last crimes done through Rashid’s business that he is participating in blue jobs in the Middle East (This is against Arab League’s law), for that Rashid has been arrested by FBI after investigating with him for trading in Drugs and Blue Jobs.