Legal Question in Immigration Law in California

Hello,

My name is **** ****** Malone. I am writing on behalf of my Mother. She is 75 years old and needs your advice. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to give us your opinion on what she can do after being wrongly accuse 12 years ago.

In 1997, my Mother applied for an SBA loan for her clothing business to expand and export to Greece. She is a naturalized citizen of the United States but was born in Greece. She had purchase orders in hand worth over one million dollars. The SBA took an "unreasonable" amount of time to approve the loan, (the phrase "unreasonable" was used by the manager of one of the banks we were to get one of the 2 loans from) and she lost the purchase orders. In the interim, some of the money had already been dispersed. So my Mother flew to Greece to save the purchase orders or try to get new ones. The SBA thought that she had done something illegal and was "fleeing" the country. Once a friend told her that the SBA had claimed that the whole loan was fraud, she panicked and stayed here in Greece to try to earn the money to pay the SBA back to clear her record. She didn't have any of the money because she had already sent over $100,000 of the loan money to different companies in Asia to fulfill the purchase orders. She couldn't create such an income here in Greece and has been in dire straights for the last 12 years. The worst part about it is that the government charged her on the last day (5 years later in 2002) before the statute of limitations was to expire, on RICO charges of all things. Before these ridiculous charges, my NEVER had any legal problems before, not even a parking ticket. She was ALWAYS a law abiding citizen and had donated for many years to the Santa Monica police department as well as volunteered to feed the homeless at a local park where many homeless lived. She was also a member and a donor of Souther California Hadassah. And when she lived in Las Vegas, she was the Chairman of Ways and Means of Child Help USA.

Now I would like to get to my question. My Mother has talked to a Lawyer in Los Angeles and he says that with the with the evidence that we have she will get acquitted if we fight it. She has a federal indictment against her from 2002. So my Mother decided that it would be in her best interest to go to the US and with her lawyer, turn herself in on her own to show good faith. So she legally changed her last name to her mothers maiden name. Since she has dual citizenship, she then got a Greek passport and then went to the US Embassy here in Athens to get a visa. While she was there for her visa interview, they took her fingerprints. After 15 minutes, they asked her if she ever used the name ****** (her married name that is on the SBA loans). She got scared and said no and that she had no idea what they were talking about. So they said "OK" and then they told her that she would get the visa. And she got her passport by courier today and the visa was there. My mother believes that they compared her fingerprints to the ones she gave for her green-card back in 1964, and that's how they found out it was her.

My question is this: Is the US Embassy bound by law to deny her a visa if they are sure she lied on her application (she did)? Is it against the law to issue the visa only for the purpose of alerting the authorities in the US to arrest her once she arrives at the airport ("entrapment")? Since she is arriving as a Greek citizen, can they arrest her at the airport at LAX?

Although my Mother was born in Greece, she considers the United States her home. Also, she hasn't seen her daughter for the past 12 years. Any help you might be able to give would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for everything,

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