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: What the Judge Ate for Breakfast

How much prison time should a fake Indian chief get?

By Ron Sylvester

Malcolm Webber will soon face sentencing as the convicted chief of a fake American Indian tribe that duped thousands of illegal immigrants out of money with the promise of U.S. citizenship.

Lawyers in the case are asking U.S. Senior District Judge Wesley Brown to consider sentences between eight months and 18 years for the 70-year-old Webber.

A jury in August convicted Webber on six counts, including immigration fraud, for selling memberships in the unrecognized Kaweah Indian Nation for hundreds of dollars. As the case unfolded in Wichita, evidence showed that Webber used Hispanic churches to recruit members, which eventually reached 10,000 to 12,000 nationwide.

Prosecutor Brent Anderson said Webber should get maximum time of more than 17 years for preying on vulnerable victims:

Here, we have thousands and thousands of persons who gave what little money they may have had to Mr. Webber in the hope he could make good on his promise of making them U.S. citizens. … (They) either did not know that or naively believed, in their desperation to stay in the United States, that he somehow could make that happen.

But Kurt Kerns argues in Webber’s defense that the people who joined were in the U.S. illegally and so were participants in the crime - not victims. Kerns also disputed the prosecution’s contention that Webber carried out an elaborate scheme over years to promote fraud:

The government contends that because tribal members received official looking membership cards and certificates, this somehow makes this a sophisticated operation. This is the equivalent of saying that because someone has nice handwriting, they must be a writer.

Anderson said no court has ever contemplated the kind of lengths Webber went to in selling his “tribe:”

Mr. Webber created an entire government … complete with a secretary of state, cabinet members, articles of incorporation, multiple offices complete with official seals … an Indian store complete with Kaweah trinkets and merchandise, actual Kaweah Indian Nation license plates, and a police department with vehicles, uniformed officers, badges and guns.

Kerns is asking the judge to compare the sentences given to those other chiefs, secretaries of state and police officers - all of whom received about a year or less following guilty pleas.

Webber faces Brown for sentencing at 10 a.m. Friday in U.S. District Court in Wichita.

Full post as published by What the Judge Ate for Breakfast on December 09, 2008 (boomark / email).