Charles T. Busse
Charles T. Busse
Ex-Warren City Council President Charles T. Busse, who was an immigration attorney living in Birmingham, was sentenced Monday in federal court to three years in prison for his involvement in an immigration fraud and bribery scheme that helped immigrants cheat deportation, the Macomb Daily reports. He was also ordered to pay $575,753 in restitution for unpaid taxes.
Busse, 59, sought more than $990,000 from about 40 of his clients in the scheme, which involved a federal agent, Mitch Hotts of The Macomb Daily reports. He served on city council for 16 years and was not re-elected in 2003..
“Mr. Busse took advantage of a position and stuck his finger in the eye of the government,” U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said during the sentencing.
Authorities charged Busse with paying more than $5,000 in bribes to federal agent Clifton Divers, 48, of Detroit, between 2009 and 2015, to obtain numerous deferrals of deportation and other immigration benefits for his clients. He also was charged with criminal tax evasion and with violating the federal law that requires an attorney to report any cash payments of more than $10,000.
Agent Divers is charged with taking cash bribes, free legal services and other things of value. Specifically, he is charged with conspiring to impair, obstruct and defeat the lawful function of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security by dishonest means, destruction and falsification of records to obstruct an official investigation by the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Divers is scheduled to go to trial June 5.
In 2001, the feds indicted Busse, who was then president of the Warren CIty Council, on charges of mail fraud, bribery, extortion and foreign travel in aid of racketeering. The charges related to his time serving as a trustee in 1996 for the Warren Employee's Retirement System. He was eventually acquitted of those charges in 2003.
