They have not yet entered pleas to the charges. If convicted, the defendants face up to 10 years in prison for each child illegally smuggled into the country. The wire and mail fraud charge carries a sentence of up to 5 years in prison. The state attorney general's office also filed suit Thursday against the two women and their husbands, Jay Lieberman and Dennis Reingold, seeking an order preventing them from participating in adoption placements. Writer Michigan man told a Uniondale Federal Court judge yesterday that joy turned to worry after two Medford women were charged with smuggling infant Mexican children into the United States.
Many children wound up with families on Long Island.
He said the arrests heightened their fears that their baby would be taken from them and deported. Four months after their arrest, both women, neighbors for years on Blackpine Drive, pleaded guilty to being participants in the scheme. A month later, a lawyer, Mario Reyes, of Douglas, Ariz., who was accused of being involved in the scheme, pleaded guilty. Reyes admitted to smuggling the children into the U.S. after defrauding Mexican authorities by forging documents and having women pose as some of the biological mothers. The legal status of the smuggled children is in limbo.