GREEN-CARD SELLERS SENTENCED.

Byline: Troy Anderson Staff Writer

The leaders of a counterfeiting ring that sold about $11 million in fake green cards to illegal immigrants in the San Fernando Valley and elsewhere were sentenced Monday to federal prison terms, immigration officials said.

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service also announced the guilty pleas of four men linked to the San German-Castroena Organized Crime Group, which produced more than $100 million worth of counterfeit documents sold throughout the city, including Canoga Park, Van Nuys and Pacoima.

Agents seized about 2.1 million false documents in that case, including fraudulent green cards, Social Security cards, driver's licenses, birth certificates and insurance cards, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Susan J. De Witt.

``This is the largest seizure ever in the history of the INS and the most sophisticated organized crime group ever encountered,'' said Aaron Wilson, supervisory special agent for the INS in Los Angeles. INS agents dubbed the case Operation Big Brother.

Those sentenced Monday were leaders in the counterfeiting ring that sold fake green cards for up to $10,000 to 1,100 immigrants, officials said.

La Habra resident Jose Mendoza De La Merced, 44, was sentenced to nine years in federal prison, and Los Angeles resident Don Thomas Banzon, 47, was sentenced to seven years and nine months in federal prison. Both were ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution.

INS officials said the sentences were the most severe in the agency's history.

For many of the immigrant victims from the Philippines, China, Korea and India, the steep price tag was their life savings, Wilson said.

As part of the two-year investigation, INS agents seized Merced's $350,000 home in La Habra, a Mercedes-Benz, a Honda minivan, a Lexus and about $10,000 in cash and jewelry.

``He lived an extravagant lifestyle,'' Wilson said. ``Bank records show some of the victims' money was used for rent in high-rise office buildings, cell phones, luxury automobiles, car insurance and employee payrolls.''

In the case involving the organized counterfeiting ring, prosecutors announced Monday that the four men have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges.

``We tied this group to documents seized in more than 80 other INS counterfeit investigations,'' Wilson said.

The men, Alejandro Hernandez-Rivera, 25; Heriberto Ponce-Lira, 28; Guillermo Moreno-Ramirez, 39; and Bernancio Ibarra-Sanchez, 31, all citizens of Mexico, pleaded guilty last week and await sentencing. Federal authorities are seeking three fugitives in the case. Five people were sentenced previously.

The conspiracy was based at Los Tomatoes restaurant on West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, officials said. INS agents also discovered printing presses in a garage.