Marriage Scam

A hot Mexican actress and her American husband are likely to stand trial on immigration fraud charges this week after her spurned fashion-photographer ex-boyfriend claimed to feds that the couple's marriage was a scam.

Markus Klinko, star of the Bravo reality illustrate "Double Exposure," told federal immigration officials said that Fernanda Romero's 2005 marriage to Kent Ross, of California, was a green-card scam after she deserted Klinko in 2007, prosecutors say.

Klinko is now predictable to be the star witness at Romero and Ross' immoral trial, slated to start tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Romero and Ross, both were 28, each face up to 5 years in central prison if convicted.

Their lawyers maintain the wedding weren't a scam, saying the pair had been in love but the marriage didn't work out.

"This is a case of two young people in love but immature to the complexities of marriage. The older man, Markus Klinko, who was fanatical with a young woman half his age, who spurned as her lover, was driven by malice and revenge to destroy her life, her career and her reputation," their filings say.

Prosecutors said that although Ross and Romero's claims of a "twister romance" that resulted in their June 2005 marriage, they were in fact set up by Romero's ex-boyfriend, Michael Ball (president of the Rock & Republic jeans brand).
Fernanda Romero, who had a bit part in last year's "Drag Me to Hell," paid Ross a $5,000 dowry for serving to keep her in the United States and working as a model and actress, filings say. The feds said the pair never even lived jointly.

The criminal complaint said: "After they were married, Ross lived as a single male with a roommate and sustained to date as if he had never been married. Romero likewise lived as an unmarried woman and carried on dating other men”.

One of those men was Klinko, who has photographed the likes of Britney Spears and Mariah Carey. The pair met about a month after Romero's marriage and went on their first date 2 days after, the feds say.

The filing says she came spotless about the marriage in '06, telling Klinko she had tied the knot only so "she could obtain permanent-residence status." The complaint says Romero discarded Klinko in early 2007.

The relationship didn't end silently. It was at the center of a $500,000 lawsuit Klinko filed later that year against Ball, the Rock & Republic CEO. The astounding suit charged that Ball had backed out of a deal with Klinko after resulting out the lensman had been seeing Romero.

The outfit, later dismissed, also charged that Ball arranged Romero's marriage to Kent.

Klinko has angrily left without ratting out the marriage, but both the feds and Romero have fingered him as the steal.

Romero has filed court papers and said she plans to disclose the Swiss native had his own scam marriage in 1987 but dumped his wife after four months when he found an American he liked more.