Scammers steal identity of renowned Miami attorney to target immigrants on social media

In one TikTok video posted Wednesday, a smiling President Donald Trump stands next to renowned immigration lawyer Angel Leal in a gray, corporate office.

“Hi! I’m here obtaining the permission President Trump has given me to help all immigrants obtain their residency,” says the Miami-based attorney.

In other clips, the attorney is with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who helps him free detainees. He solicits $5,500 to obtain immigrants’ permanent residencies and U.S. citizenships without the required English-only exam. Smiling citizens and permanent residents wave American flags proudly holding up their documents, thanking Leal for his services.

None of the videos are real.

Since October, unknown scammers have created countless accounts on social media platforms to impersonate Leal — garnering hundreds of thousands of followers.

They are leveraging artificial intelligence to steal his identity and manufacture clips of the veteran attorney. The fake Leals promise to bring deported immigrants back to the U.S. for a convenient fee of $1,500 and obtain citizenship for immigrants in a month. In one clip, he stands in front of a detention center with two recently liberated women in orange jumpsuits.

“They are stealing my logo. They are falsifying my signature on fake contracts,” Leal told the Miami Herald. “People that want our offices to help them and believe in our advocacy, they are taking advantage of their trust. That’s what makes it so devastating and so painful.”

A Herald analysis of Instagram, Facebook and TikTok revealed dozens of fake accounts pretending to be Leal still up on Wednesday. One fake TikTok account has 243,900 followers and 806,000 likes. Leal’s real account has 259,000 followers and 1.3 million likes.

“It’s thousands of people who are being fooled,” said Leal, who estimates that the total of money stolen in the scams could reach six or seven figures.

The phenomenon of immigration attorney scams is not new. For years, notarios — notary publics — in Miami have pretended to be immigration lawyers, with devastating consequences, like financial ruin or deportations orders for the immigrants who trust them. But the use of AI to impersonate Leal marks an evolution in how scammers are harnessing vulnerable immigrants’ anxieties and turning them into lucrative frauds.

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And in the Trump era of mass deportations, visa restrictions and terminated protections, the pool of potential victims is massive. After hundreds of thousands of immigrants lost deportation protections and work permits, they have turned to lawyers like Leal to navigate an impenetrable immigration system, frequently doing so in a language and legal system that is not their own.

The scammers have even created fake immigration hearings — convincing victims that they were in a virtual court by concocting fake montages, Leal said. Then the victims miss their real appointment. Immigration judges can order someone deported for missing their court dates.

“They’re deceived into believing they’ll represent them in court or even file paperwork, but they won’t do that because they’re just blatant con artists. And what happens then? On top of the financial loss, these are people whose cases are being harmed,” said Leal.

In a May 24 video, the fake Leal announces the “good news” that immigrants who have been two years in the U.S. and don’t have criminal records can apply for green cards, no interview or exam required. He is juxtaposed against an American flag and Trump. The video racked up over 400 comments, 10,000 likes, and nearly 500,000 views.

“I have a detained son who hasn’t committed any crimes,” said one man. The fake Leal replies: “Send me your number via private message as soon as possible.”

Massive scheme

Leal is an easy target for scammers. He has a large following on social media, where he shares advice to immigrants in the middle of cases. He was a regular contributor on the long-running, Spanish-language court show Caso Cerrado, Case Closed, and also is an expert guest on television news to discuss the latest immigration news. Scammers have a large pool of material to train language models on how to talk, look and act like Leal.

Leal’s parents worked hard for him to go to college, he said. He got a mostly full ride to the University of Miami and then attended Georgetown law school. One of the things he is most proud of in life is becoming a lawyer, and of helping people who needs his services.

“After all the sacrifice and efforts you put into your career, to see your name used in this fashion to take their money away and put them in harm’s way is devastating. To think that with artificial intelligence, your life’s work can be demeaned is very painful,” Leal said..

The fake accounts have exploded in the last three months, Leal told the Herald. The scammers — it’s unclear how many there are or how they are organizing — share fake numbers and emails, and digital payments accounts.The attorney hired an anti-piracy company to remove videos. Since March, 6,500 profiles, mostly on TikTok, have been taken down, Leal said.

A TikTok spokesperson said that the platform’s community guidelines prohibit impersonating and scamming others. Between October and December 2025, the spokesperson said, TikTok had proactively removed 97.7% of videos violating its fraud and scam policies even before a user had reported them.

Meta, the company that runs Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook, did not respond to Herald requests for comment about how it addresses lawyer scams aimed at targeting immigrants looking for legal counsel.

Many of the clips have hallmarks of being fraudulent: misspelled words on screen; photoshopped backgrounds and unrealistic cameos like Trump; robotic movements and mouth gestures, and awkward pronunciations of words like citizenship and procedures. Some even have tags saying that the content is AI-generated. The accounts’ names are strange variations of Angel Leal, lawyer, and immigration.

Still, the videos have hundreds of comments from social media users asking for help or inquiring how to get in touch. In one of the fake videos, users laid out their immigration plights to the fake Leal accounts and asked how they could get in touch with Leal.

“My son needs your help, but he doesn’t have money,” said one mother. “I have a deportation order,” said another user. “I’ve been in the U.S. for 30 years. All my children are citizens. The oldest is 29,” someone else wrote.

“Write to me privately,” the fake accounts have replied to dozens of users.

The scam takes a toll

At Leal’s office in the heart of Doral, the phones don’t stop ringing. Some days, more than 100 people call to report the fraud or to say they fell prey to the scam.

Leal has one or two team members dedicated to fielding queries on the issue on a given day. He even changed his number and deleted his Whatsapp account. Scammers were using the popular messaging service to target immigrants. Deleting Whatsapp cut a direct lifeline to immigrants, but Leal reasoned it was a way to protect his clients.

“I’ve spent a lot of time, money, energy, and manpower on this. I’m just going to keep escalating this until hopefully at some point it ends,” Leal said.

Other lawyers have also become the target of similar AI scams. It’s only time until it gets worse, said Leal , who is concerned that state and federal law and regulations are not keeping up with the rate of the evolution of artificial intelligence. It’s a worry that experts share.

Leal has reported the mass impersonation scheme to the FBI, the Federal Communications Commission, the Florida Bar and the Doral Police Department. At the top of his social media, he’s pinned messages warning people that he’s a target of a scam.

But the video scams continue, relentlessly flooding social media.

In a recent fake video posted in June, an AI-generated Leal gestures awkwardly at the camera. His mouth lags behind his words announcing that the law firm reactivated its Whatsapp messaging account. He ends the clip on a warning.

“Please be very careful of scammers impersonating us,” said the fake Leal.

This story was originally published June 11, 2026 at 5:30 AM.