No Tengo Dinero

Jose Leon knows how to get things.

"Somebody need a house? I reference to this guy," he says cheerfully in a thick accent, holding up a Re/Max agent's business card.

As CEO of American Connection Services Inc., the 38-year-old Leon says he tries to help Kansas City's immigrants negotiate our country's unfamiliar customs and laws.

His thick, ringed fingers roam his desk. He pulls out a large Ziploc bag that holds a stack of business cards 3 inches deep. "You need a mechanic? I have mechanics here, too. You need a bondsman, I have this here. You need insurance? My friend next door, he does insurance. I send it next door." He points to his telephone. "Calls, calls, calls, calls. My phone is ringing, ringing, ringing. And you need a good restaurant? I have a good Mexican restaurant!"

Leon also dabbles in roofing. He rides around in pickup trucks with construction crews, translating instructions from their English-speaking clients. Leon says he accompanies Spanish-speaking maids to their first housecleaning jobs just to make sure there are no misunderstandings.

"I really try to make good service," he says.

And yet, for all his good intentions, Leon doesn't have the karma of a man whose business is helping people.

Leon's front door is just steps away from the traffic zooming by on 23rd Street in Independence. His office shares a strip with gun shops, fast-food restaurants, check-cashing depots and crumbling parking lots. Last July, someone shattered Leon's front window, and thieves stole his computer and a lockbox full of money, documents and checks. The next day, someone robbed his house on Bennington in Kansas City. The police report lists miscellaneous stolen papers, one Rolex and $14,000 in cash among the stolen items.

Leon seems to suffer such misfortunes regularly. Recently he's been driving a rental car because he hit a deer on East 23rd Street, he says, heaving one leather-shoed foot up onto his desk and lifting his pant leg to display a verifying bruise. Leon says his last office burned down. Once, at a North Kansas City car wash, someone punched him in the face, he says. He points out a scar to prove it. Leon also says that he has diabetes, which makes it hard for him to work every day.

Nonetheless, Leon is an opportunist -- which isn't illegal. If anything, it proves he's living the American dream. And he's becoming famous, too, at least among the people who form the grassroots infrastructure for helping Kansas City's Spanish-speaking immigrants.

But that fame might attract more trouble for the accident-prone Leon.

The voice coming over Sister Alicia Macias' speakerphone barks short, static notes in Spanish. The nun sits patiently, waiting to translate. The person on the other end will give his name only as "Augustin." He's talking about Leon.

Macias relays that Augustin is from Jalisco, Mexico, and works in both Kansas and Missouri. He's been here 15 years but doesn't speak English. He says that he wanted to become a citizen of the United States and to get health insurance, so he contacted Leon. Leon came to his house and said he could take care of everything -- but the process would take six months and cost $2,000 a month. Later, Leon said Augustin owed the IRS $8,000 in back taxes. Augustin gave Leon the money to pay the IRS, though he never saw any documentation of the debt. Leon told him he would accept only cash and gave him no receipt.

Augustin recalls that Leon treated him very well -- like a friend -- when Leon came to his house.

He gave Leon $14,000 before he started asking to see results. Augustin says Leon always told him he was working on it, but he grew less friendly. Augustin says that during their last conversation, on December 30, 2002, Leon told him that if Augustin didn't leave him alone, Leon would call the Immigration and Naturalization Service and have Augustin taken away.

Augustin is one of hundreds of people who come to Macias every year with stories they believed, of "new amnesty" programs for legalizing immigrants, of impossibly cheap health insurance, of deals on legal services. She works at El Centro, a family support center that offers English and Spanish lessons, job-training courses, help with home financing, and child care. When immigrants repeatedly come to her with complaints about the same person, Macias starts recording the promises made and the money lost. Leon now has his own folder among her files on suspicious companies and individuals.

It's hard to imagine forking over $14,000 in cash without a receipt or a guarantee. But, Macias says, "People are desperate to be OK in this country. They'll do anything. They just want to believe."

That much was clear three years ago, when the Pitch reported on the practices of Alicia Morales, who wasn't a lawyer but was giving legal advice to immigrants and advertising her services over a radio show on Spanish-language station KCZZ 1480 (Allie Johnson's "Sounds of the Border," May 17, 2001). People would pay Morales for what they thought was protection under various amnesty laws in order to stay in the United States. The luckiest victims lost only money; others were deported because of Morales' mistakes. Though Morales isn't a lawyer, she's married to one -- James Phillips of the Phillips & Phillips law firm. It took nearly three years of complaints before authorities took any action against James Phillips and Alicia Morales. On August 5, 2003, Al Walczak, a deputy disciplinary administrator with the Kansas Bar Association, filed a formal complaint against James Phillips for allowing his wife to assist in the practice of law. And on February 10 of this year, the Consumer Protection and Antitrust Division of Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline's office filed suit against Alicia Morales.