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The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts released a video of alleged sham marriage mastermind Jennifer Gonzalez detailing her pay-for-play scheme which officials say netted her over $6 million.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office accused Gonzalez of orchestrating fake marriages between U.S. citizens and illegal immigrants, charging the immigrants up to $40,000 per marriage.
Gonzalez can be seen on a video recorded by a witness cooperating with federal law enforcement explaining how her scheme worked.
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“They will come, I will present them to the wife, they’re like, ‘yes, I want them, not a problem, I’ll be back in, I don’t know, three weeks.’ And they would leave and make me hold these girls for months,” she explained.
A screenshot from a U.S. Attorney’s in the District of Massachusetts video showing Jennifer Gonzalez explaining how her green card marriage scheme worked. (U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts)
“The payment, it’s agreed by both parties, OK? This is the first initial payment for the total amount of $38,000. Now, let me calculate that real quick. So $38,000 minus $3,000,” she continued, while using a calculator. “That’s going to give us $35,000. And then the day of the wedding, you have to bring me, what? $12,000.
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“You and I are the ones in this contract, not nobody else. Because we don’t want to get your wife and yourself into a…putting in paper about a fake marriage. You know what I mean? Does that make sense to you? Because if anything happened, we don’t want them to have any proof that this was fake,” she said.
Photos provided by the Department of Justice show Jessica Tavares, an alleged co-conspirator, marrying an illegal immigrant from Brazil in May 2018. (Department of Justice)
Gonzalez also explained to the witness, who she believed to be an illegal immigrant, that Massachusetts was the best place to go for illegal immigrants because of its sanctuary state status.
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“Massachusetts is best place for you to be. That is a fact,” Gonzalez said.
“You get health insurance. You get a lot of help as an immigrant here,” she explained, adding, “Trump doesn’t like this state because…the state defends us very much.”
She also revealed that she stopped arranging the marriages around 2025 because of increased federal immigration enforcement.
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Gonzalez further told the witness that she owned multiple properties in the Dominican Republic, which she called “my country,” and in Puerto Rico.
“Miss Gonzalez got rich off selling the American dream, all the while investing her money in another country,” Leah Foley, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, told reporters during a Wednesday press conference announcing the scheme.
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U.S. Attorney Leah Foley announces the the arrest of six people for allegedly arranging sham marriages over the past decade that netted them millions of dollars during a news conference on Oct. 21, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Michael Casey)
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While prosecutors described Gonzalez as the ringleader of the operation, authorities arrested four other co-conspirators involved in the scheme.
Fox News Digital’s James Cirrone contributed to this report.