Liana Barrientos Has Been Married 10 Times, And No, It’s Not Because She Loves Weddings
Marriage is a sacred institution, between a woman and 10 men, apparently. At least that’s the motto 39-year-old Liana Barrientos lives by. Police say the Bronx woman has been married 10 times and hasn’t divorced once.
So does this woman just really enjoy wedding cake and DJs? Unfortunately, Liana’s motivations were quite criminal. According to the Associated Press, she married 10 times not out of impulsive love, but allegedly as part of an immigration scam.
Perhaps this fact was the biggest clue: Though Barrientos’ “just married” marathon went on for 11 years, half of these marriages took place over a six month period, reported the New York Daily News. Evidently, Barrientos skirted the law as long as she did because she filed licenses in different towns on Long Island or in Westchester County.
Still, Liana used her own social security number, date and location of birth and her parents’ names on each license.
Her racket came to the attention of officials when Barrientos filed a license for her most recent nuptials in 2010, NBC New York reported. Barrientos claimed that she was getting married for the first time, to a man from the Bronx named Salle Keita. Of course, that was a lie – and detectives soon unearthed her other husbands.
And they were quite diverse. Barrientos married men from Egypt, Turkey, Georgia, Pakistan, Mali, the Czech Republic, and Bangladesh, the AP added; at one point, eight of them at once called her wife. Among these men, one was deported in 2006 after he apparently made threatening statements against the country and earned the attention of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
Seven of Liana’s husbands used the union to file for permanent status; if this failed, they divorced Barrientos and tried again with someone else, officials claimed.
But don’t worry, Liana got something out of it; she admitted to police she was paid for her services.
Maybe this most recent time around, Liana thought “10th time’s a charm.” But she’d be wrong – she could spend four years in prison.
[Photo Courtesy Joe Raedle/Getty Images]
