‘Bride for hire’ Liana Barrientos, wedded 10 men in 11 years without ever getting divorced from previous grooms, for the money: Gets rehab sentence, no jail time
Liana Barrientos (right) pled guilty to felony fraud charge, Thursday. She wed 10 men in 11 years, including the 3 in the photo without divorcing any of the ‘husbands’
‘Bride for hire’ Liana Barrientos, 40, wedded 10 men in 11 years without ever divorcing previous grooms.
Confessesrunning sham wedding scheme at $2000 per marriage
Charged with filing fraudulent marriage license application and a bogus marriage license
Pleads guilty to single felony count, lying on 2010 application that wedding Salle Keita was her first ever marriage
Judge promises to reduce charges to misdemeanor if she successfully completes 12-to-18-month outpatient rehab program

For $2000, Liana Barrientos would be your instant bride
A quick order bride, Liana Barrientos, 40, pled guilty to a single felony count for lying on a 2010 application for marriage to a man named Salle Keita. She stated in the Marriage License Application that it was her first ever marriage. However, the rotating bride had wedded multiple men in over a decade. Thursday, she entered a guilty plea on a felony fraud charge. for making false declarations.
Barrientos was arrested in April for allegedly for running an immigration scam where she serially wedded 10 different men in 11 years without ever getting divorced from any of her previous grooms. Th catch was that all the men are foreign-born nationals. According to prosecutors, Barrientos’ cycle of phoney weddings hit a peak between 1999 and 2002, a period where she got married to eight men at once, all within the Long Island and Westchester areas of New York.
The non-discriminating sham cycle did stray into potentially dangerous territory such as the case of one of the husbands. The man who was from Pakistan was arrested and later deported for making threatening statements against the U.S.
Liana Barrientos pled guilty to a felony fraud charge, but would not serve time if she completes a rehab program and stays drug free
The tripwire was the sham wedding to Salle Keita. Suspicious registry officials invited Tbe Bronx PD who uncovered nine previous marriage licenses for Barrientos, including a half-dozen issued in the span of six busy months. The first license was dated Nov. 5, 1999, to husband Mohamed Gerbril, and the last on Aug. 3, 2002, to groom Kakhaber Khorbaladze — her sixth marriage that year.Investigations by U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services flagged irregularities in her cases.
The Department of Homeland Security investigated, as the husbands were from so-called “red-flagged” countries like Egypt, Georgia, Pakistan, and Mali. The outcome led to the Bronx prosecutors got involved.
The Department of Homeland Security investigated, as the husbands were from so-called “red-flagged” countries like Egypt, Georgia, Pakistan, and Mali.
Barrientos gave details of the scam when she admitted to investigators she charged around $2,000 in cash from one of the men, an immigrant from Georgia, in exchange for helping him get a green card.
She was arrested and charged with filing a false marriage license application and a bogus marriage license, felony counts that carry a maximum prison sentence of four years.
The native of the Dominican Republic who was originally arrested last November, had a rap sheet dating back to 1997 with arrests for drug possession and loitering in Manhattan.
There was another sealed Manhattan case in 2007, a 2010 bust for jumping a turnstile and trespassing, and a 2012 arrest for drug possession.
Barrientos in court with her attorney during the trial
Barrientos however, who pled guilty to the single felony count for lying on that 2010 marriage license application to Salle Keita, is likely going to avoid serving prison time for the immigration scam if she completes a rehabilitation program and stays out of drug use, according to the terms of the deal.
Judge Steven Barrett sitting in Bronx Supreme Court, promised to knock her charge down to a misdemeanor if she successfully completes a 12-to-18-month outpatient rehab program, warning that he would reinstate the mandatory 4 year prison term for up to four years for felony charge if she gets re-arrested or tests positive for drugs.
Leave a Reply