I try to tell people immigrants aren’t naive . Then a story like this comes along.

A Chinese national living in California allegedly created a false Army special forces unit, providing recruits with false documents and uniforms and even marching with them in a parade, authorities said.

Yupeng Deng, 51, also known as David Deng, was arrested Tuesday morning by agents from the FBI and the U.S. Department of Defense, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said in a statement. He faces 13 counts of theft by false pretenses, manufacturing deceptive government documents and counterfeit of an official government seal.

Deng, of El Monte, California, a Los Angeles suburb, allegedly recruited more than 100 other Chinese nationals into the unit, dubbed the U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve unit, telling them it was a path to U.S. citizenship, authorities said. He allegedly called himself “supreme commander” of the unit, created in October 2008.

Recruits were allegedly charged initiation fees ranging from $300 to $450, with annual renewal fees of $120, according to Deputy District Attorney Richard Ceballos. In addition, authorities said, recruits could increase their rank in the fraudulent unit by making cash donations to Deng.

The recruits were provided with phony U.S. Army uniforms, fake documents and fraudulent military identification cards, authorities said. Deng also allegedly instructed them to report to his office in the Los Angeles suburb of Temple City — which authorities said was decorated to look like an official U.S. military recruiting center — to undergo training and indoctrination, according to prosecutors.- CNN

They even marched in a parade in uniform. What army did the parade organizers think they belonged to?

I can believe this kind of stuff. Some years back a man in Florida was trying to start his own currency. He even tried to evict a Bank of America.