In Orange County, an email landed in attorney Sabrina Rivera’s inbox in April, from a Colorado man panicked about the status of his immigration case.
He told Rivera that she was his lawyer. But Rivera had never heard his name before, never represented him and had no idea why he thought she had.
The man sent screenshots of his text conversations with someone claiming to be Rivera. Someone was using her name — and her state bar license number — to scam the man into believing she was representing him in his removal proceedings. He had paid the impostor at least $700 since February, he told her.
Immigration law scams surged in the past year and a half, since the Trump administration’s crackdown resulted in thousands of new cases flooding the court system, attorneys and immigrant aid groups say.
The area of law has always been ripe for fraud, but the hustles have evolved, getting more sophisticated in the past year. Most recently, scammers have been taking on the identities of practicing attorneys.
Some rely on AI to generate realistic-looking attorney photos and websites. Other scammers take videos and photos from real practicing attorneys and overlay different audio to trick immigrants into sending them money.
Bar-licensed attorneys have also tried to fast-track the system, filing invalid for asylum or lawful permanent residency applications for unknowing clients.
“It’s really the worst environment that I think anyone in the field has ever seen for taking advantage of people,” said Daniel Sharp, the chief of the Los Angeles County Office of Immigrant Affairs. “Folks are more desperate for services than before.”
Alexandra Lozano, who was licensed to practice law in Washington state and had an office in Commerce, surrendered her bar license and closed her law firm in June. Clients claim she fabricated stories of domestic abuse and human trafficking to apply for humanitarian visas, allegedly without her clients knowing.
Lawyers and nonprofit organizations say they have identified at least 60 Los Angeles-based immigrants who were her clients. The number is likely much higher, said Lucero Ortiz, a clinical supervising attorney at the Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic.
“These are people who are trying to follow the rules and navigate a very complex legal system. Their best intentions are being taken advantage of,” said Kevin Brennan, the vice president of communications at Catholic Charities USA, an organization that represents more than 170 religious agencies across the country.
More than 60 of its organizations that provide direct legal services have been impersonated by con artists. The organizations have handled over a thousand scam cases in the past year.
Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, a member of Catholic Charities Los Angeles, has received calls about potential impersonation cases involving its attorneys at least weekly since Trump retook office.
Lately, it happens daily, said Jose Luis Garcia, the interim program director.
There is little data on the extent of the fraud cases, because reporting is so sporadic and scattered across dozens of agencies.
One marker: The Federal Trade Commission received 1,626 immigration service fraud complaints in 2025, up from 1,315 the year before and 623 reports in 2023.
In total, 26 immigration lawyers have faced disciplinary actions nationwide this year as of late June, according to an analysis of data published by the Executive Office for Immigration Review. Eight of those were lawyers licensed to practice law in California, outpacing the six cases reported in all of 2025.
The state bar received 1,637 non-attorney complaints from July 2025 to June of this year, a spokesperson said. (These are not all related to immigration cases.) The agency received 1,223 complaints the year before, and 908 the year before that.
The scams typically range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands. In one case, a family paid up to $30,000, attorneys said. People have sold personal belongings, like their cars, to afford services that turn out to be bogus, said Christopher Ross, who oversees migration and refugee resettlement services at Catholic Charities USA.
One man in Los Angeles wanted to apply for a green card and paid $6,000 to someone posing as a lawyer in June. He received a fake green card approval, but the bogus attorney demanded he wire over another $4,000 through Zelle so the official documentation could be mailed to him, said Joel Rodriguez, the program director of Immigration Refugee Resettlement at Catholic Charities of Los Angeles. He sent the money and never heard from the person again.
When immigrants realize they’ve been ripped off, they’re often left with no money to secure real representation. Their cases become more complicated if false applications have been filed, making future legal work more expensive and can put them at risk of immediate deportation, Ortiz said.
The fraud has only added pressure on a over-strained immigration system. Thousands of immigrants are now seeking new representation, even as most nonprofit and pro bono legal services in the region are at capacity, with their funding cut by the Trump administration.
Martha paced the lobby of an office building in Oxnard one afternoon in December. She was nervous, but determined.
Just a few feet away, the man she hired more than three years ago to handle her naturalization case hid in his office, seemingly avoiding her. But after months of unanswered questions, Martha was intent to get some answers.
A family friend had recommended the man to Martha and her husband in early 2023. The couple had already met with several lawyers, who told them her case “was basically impossible.” They decided to give it another shot, and set an appointment with the man.
He sold them a dream.
“He promised he could make our case succeed,” she said. “He gave us hope. So we signed the contract.”
In three years, they paid him $14,000 as their case stalled.
Now he refused to answer the door. That night, her daughter-in-law stayed awake, scouring the internet for answers. She searched for his state bar number. Nothing. She looked at California’s attorney database. Still nothing.
Then, she got a hit.
But the man wasn’t a lawyer. He was an immigration consultant.
Immigration consultants are not attorneys, but can be licensed by California to perform certain functions, like filling out immigration forms.
While the profession is legitimate, it has become a breeding ground for bad actors, who often claim to be lawyers and prey on vulnerable immigrants, said Kathleen Rivas, the supervising attorney for the immigrant rights project at Public Counsel.
Marissa Montes, the director of Loyola Immigrant Justice Clinic, was impersonated by someone who contacted immigrants through Facebook and Whatsapp, she said.
She tried to report the fraud but hit a wall. The state bar suggested Montes contact local authorities, but Los Angeles police didn’t have jurisdiction, since the scammer claimed to be based in Utah, and the victim was based in Colorado. She contacted the bank that the impersonator was using, but the company said it couldn’t do anything without a police report.
“There’s no mechanism to truly stop this person is what is scary,” Montes said.
In Orange County, Rivera reported her impostor to the state bar, which is investigating.
“Attorneys need to report this,” Rivera said. “We can’t rely on community members who are in removal proceedings to report this to the state bar when they have so much going on.”
The State Bar of California said all immigrants seeking representation should ensure the contact information for any lawyer matches what is on its website. Immigrants should also demand face-to-face consultations and a valid office address before hiring anyone.
The state bar is able to pursue disciplinary action only against California-licensed attorneys, but has no authority against impostors. It can only send cease-and-desist notices and refer the cases to local law enforcement agencies, a spokesperson said.
Today’s immigration fraud landscape is decades in the making, lawyers said.
The most vulnerable are immigrants who have been in the country for decades, with no access to immigration legalization, Ortiz said. The last comprehensive immigration reform was passed in 1986, when the Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized millions of undocumented immigrants.
Newer immigrant arrivals tend to have more access to specific temporary or humanitarian pathways that provide immigration relief. A political asylum application, for instance, must be submitted within a year of initial entry.
For Martha, perhaps the worst action taken by the immigration consultant: He filed a political asylum case on her behalf instead, which she does not qualify for and didn’t want. Asylum cases must be filed within a year of entry in the country, and an invalid claim could lead to deportation proceedings.
“He kept our money, and left us with this huge mess,” Martha said. “Now, I’m just always with the fear that I’ll get an immigration appointment for the asylum case that I didn’t want.”