Cylvia Hayes, who as the longtime girlfriend (and recently, fiancée) of Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) serves as the First Lady of Oregon, acknowledged Thursday that she had a previously unrevealed marriage to an Ethiopian national that was conducted purely for the purposes of immigration fraud. She was paid about $5,000 to participate in the sham marriage.
The false marriage occurred in 1997, when Hayes was 29; the Ethiopian immigrant, named Abraham B. Abraham, was 18 years old. Their later divorce was finalized in 2002. "Not long after the divorce, Abraham went on to graduate magna cum laude with a degree in mathematics from Greensboro College in North Carolina," The Oregonian reports. "He currently owns a two-story home in a suburb of Washington, D.C."
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