“MINNEAPOLIS — A judge on Thursday handed down an extraordinary prison sentence — nearly 42 years — to the former leader of a Minnesota nonprofit who was convicted in a staggering $250 million fraud case that helped ignite an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration(…).

President Donald Trump used the fraud cases against Bock and many others to initially justify a massive surge of federal officers to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area last winter, leading to a pushback by residents and the deaths of two people.Bock and co-conspirators enriched themselves with international travel, real estate purchases, luxury vehicles and other lavish spending, the government said.

(…)Bock’s lawyer, Kenneth Udoibok, argued for no more than three years in prison, saying she had provided key information to investigators. He argued that Bock had been unfairly painted as the mastermind and insisted that two co-defendants were responsible for running the scams. “