ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — An Egyptian national pled guilty this week to using his position as a driver at the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C. to secure fraudulent Saudi diplomatic visas to help Egyptian and Filipino aliens enter the United States illegally.

Mohamed Abdel Wahab Yakoub, a.k.a. Mohamed Wardi, a 61-year-old native of Egypt and a resident of Maryland, pled guilty before Judge Leonie Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia to one count of smuggling aliens into the United States.

He is facing a maximum 10 years in prison when he is sentenced April 7 and deportation after serving his sentencing.

Agents of the Immigration and Customs Commission (ICE) first arrested Yakoub, who was fired by the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in late 2002, at Dulles International Airport on Feb. 14, 2005, upon his arrival on a flight from Cairo, Egypt.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington had been investigating Yakoub and his alleged human smuggling scheme for more than a year, but found no information indicating that any of those illegal aliens who entered the U.S. via this alleged smuggling scheme had any terrorist ties.

According to the indictment, Yakoub was known to individuals in Egypt and the Philippines as an employee of the Saudi Embassy who had the ability to secure fraudulent Saudi diplomatic visas to get into the United States.

Court papers say Yakoub prepared employment contracts and letters on Saudi Embassy letterhead falsely stating that a Saudi diplomat was requesting an A-3 visa for Egyptians and Filipinos to work for the Saudi diplomat in the United States.

These fraudulent letters, complete with Saudi Government stamps, were then sent to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, or to the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines, to help either Egyptian aliens or Filipino aliens receive U.S. visas for entry into this country.

On several occasions, the embassies in Egypt and the Philippines approved the visa applications, believing that these aliens would be working for Saudi diplomats in the U.S.

The aliens eventually used the fraudulent visas to enter the U.S. illegally and none of them ever worked for any diplomat or any other employee of the Embassy of Saudi Arabia after arrival in this country.

Yakoub admitted that he charged each alien between $5,000 and $7,000 for the fake visas.

“Anytime you have an individual exploiting his post at an Embassy in the United States to smuggle people into this country illegally, it raises serious homeland security concerns,” said Thomas Madigan, Acting Special Agent-in-Charge for ICE in Washington. “Thankfully, we have closed down this human smuggling pipeline.”