Eight Lawyers Arrested For Phony Marriages
Getting married in Costa Rica is simple. A visit to a lawyer or a notary public, a signature here and one there, and presto, you are no married. Never met your spouse? Is that important. Well, not so, depending on the reason for the union.

To that end. the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) and the Ministerio Público yesterday detained a total of eight lawyers who, following an investigation, were involved in at least 56 phony marriages, specifically for the purposes of obtaining legal status in Costa Rica.

The detentions came as a result of 17 raids in various parts of San José, Cartago and Heredia, where seven men and a woman, all lawyers with a number of years of practice, according to the OIJ press office.

The eight accused where in the hands of the Fiscalía de Fraudes but asked the courts for three months preventive detention against only one of the accused. The other seven will have to sign in to the court office every 15 days and will not be able to leave the country, nor practice law, said the press office of the Poder Judicial.

According to the authorities, the lawyers charged between us$3.000 and us$10.000 to arrange a marriage between a foreigner and a Costa Rican. The marriage would be duly registered and was used to solicit residency with immigration.

The lawyers are being investigated for fraud and falsifying documents after a number of Costa Ricans complained that they appeared married with foreigners in the Civil registry, a marriage they had never contracted.

The lawyers face prison terms of one to six years on each count if convicted.

Authorities had been investigating the case since June. A total of 186 marriages and 34 lawyers came under scrutiny of the authorities, including witnesses to the marriages.

In many of the cases, the Costa Ricans named in the marriage document are indigents, street people who sold their "cedulas", which was used for the marriage contract, for next to nothing. Authorities say that the cedulas of elderly persons and those recently widowed were also used in the fraud.

"These marriages are used by dangerous foreigners to obtain immigration benefits when they don't have that right", said Mario Zamora, director of Migración.