WATCH: AG Blanche announces charges over green card scheme involving 'sham' marriages

The US Department of Justice has charged nearly a dozen people with participating in a multimillion-dollar scheme to help hundreds of Chinese nationals fraudulently obtain green cards through sham marriages to US citizens. According to the Associated Press, American citizens were paid as much as $30,000 to enter into bogus marriages with immigrants seeking lawful permanent resident status as part of the scheme orchestrated from New York.

The defendants charged up to $100,000 per green card, bringing in tens of millions of dollars over the course of the decade-long scheme. Authorities believe the group arranged more than 1,000 sham weddings, describing it as one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in US history.

Attorney General Todd Blanche described the scheme as a "years-long, multibillion-dollar cottage industry to criminally assist people who would not, or legally could not, otherwise become citizens of the United States."

Brief written by urgent.news from PBS NewsHour, Associated Press — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.