Immigration attorney Angel Leal Jr.’s face changes when he talks about how his life has changed since he became a victim of identity theft.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“I don’t have enough words to describe these subhuman people, because that’s what they are.
They take advantage of other people’s needs, understanding that there is fear in the community, understanding that people are scared,” says Leal, who practices immigration law in Doral, Florida, and whose image and name and even his voice have been cloned with artificial intelligence to deceive desperate immigrants seeking to regularize their status.That’s what hurts him the most, he says with indignation — the harm done to his Hispanic community — because the scammers aren’t targeting just him.Leal barely contains his anger as he describes how the fraud includes fake contracts bearing his firm’s logo, forged signatures, websites that mimic his site with minimal variations and, most disturbingly, entirely fabricated immigration hearings at which victims believe they are being granted residency or citizenship.“It’s all a lie; they’ve gone to those extremes,” he says.
Leal’s case is not an exception.The Federal Trade Commission reported that last year, more than 1 million identity theft scams were reported in the U.S., with losses exceeding $3.5 billion.
It’s an increase of nearly 20% compared with the $2.95 billion reported in 2024.In May, the FBI in Chicago issued a public warning about scammers’ impersonating lawyers and immigration officials across the country.According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, the immigration court system had 3,318,099 active cases pending at the end of February, 70% of which — more than 2.3 million — correspond to asylum-seekers awaiting hearings.With millions of families trapped in legal limbo, the demand for immigrati...