Chinese Student Charged With Six Felonies Gets No Jail Time

We recently had a federal case when a 24-year-old Chinese international student was indicted. As a recent college graduate, he paid someone $6,000 to take the GRE for him and obtained a fake passport. He was charged with six felonies and was looking at jail time – he needed a strong defense. Criminal defense attorney Samir Sarna represented the man and immediately reviewed his case.

Our client was clear, he wanted to plead guilty and go back to China without serving jail time. We negotiated for a plea offer and our client would then plead guilty to one count of conspiracy manipulation of US documents. We waived the presentence report and arranged with Homeland Security and the Department of Enforcement Removal Operations. Then we negotiated with the US attorney for a stipulated judicial removal order. By doing so, we were prepared for this to be a deportable offense, sending him back to China. The orders clarified that we weren’t fighting the immigration aspect.

By pleading guilty and waiving the pre-sentence report as soon as possible, we got quicker results. It’s not unrealistic for a federal case to have a 6 to 12-month duration, but we got our client results within 60 days. The judge sentenced him to five years of probation and assigned the stipulated judicial removal order. Now that he is back in China, the United States cannot enforce probation. Essentially, our client got everything he wanted – no jail time and he got to go back to China in an extremely quick turn around.

The outcome of an individual case depends on a variety of factors unique to that case. Case results do not guarantee or predict a similar result in any similar or future case.