July 31, 2025
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Fatima DeMaria, of East Nottingham Township, allegedly accrued roughly $1 million from immigrants for her fraudulent legal services.
A woman from East Nottingham Township allegedly ran a yearslong scheme that swindled immigrants out of thousands of dollars, according to a federal indictment announced Thursday.
Fatima DeMaria, 65, falsely presented herself as an attorney who could help undocumented immigrants obtain work permits through her business Immigration Matters Legal Services in Oxford, prosecutors from U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said. Despite not having a license to practice law or other legal accreditation to represent people in court, DeMaria allegedly filled out numerous asylum applications with inaccurate information between at least December 2021 and July 2024.
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All of the applications, prosecutors said, claimed her clients were seeking asylum based on political opinions and past torture – even though none of the immigrants involved indicated that was the case.
Yet the applications were signed under penalty of perjury; in some cases, DeMaria allegedly forged the signatures and in all, she did not inform her clients of the false information. According to law enforcement, she charged individuals $6,000-$9,000 for her services or up to $15,000 for couples, often paid in cash or peer-to-peer transactions to her personal bank accounts.
Her fees allegedly amounted to at least $1 million. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecutors said, were later withdrawn at casinos.
DeMaria is charged eight counts of asylum fraud and eight counts of mail fraud. She faces prison time if convicted, and a maximum fine of $4 million.
The FBI is seeking others who sought legal services from DeMaria's as part of her alleged scheme. Anyone with information on the federal case can fill out an online form.
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