Lacayo & Associates continues to violate court orders and provide immigration services it is not legally allowed to provide
SAN FRANCISCO (June 20, 2025) — City Attorney David Chiu announced today that he has taken legal action against a predatory immigration consulting business for charging vulnerable immigrants for immigration services it was not allowed to provide. The City filed a motion to enforce an injunction that prohibits Leonard Lacayo and Lacayo & Associates from providing immigration services. For years, Lacayo had falsely represented himself as a lawyer, scamming immigrants into paying for sham legal services and putting many at risk of losing their legal rights.
The City first secured an injunction in 2017 prohibiting Lacayo and Lacayo & Associates from providing immigration-related legal services. Lacayo violated the Court’s order, and the City brought a Motion to Enforce the injunction in 2022, which the Court granted. Despite multiple Court orders, Lacayo continues to flout the law and unlawfully provide immigration services.
“Once again, Leonard Lacayo has demonstrated zero regard for the law or the immigrant communities he purports to serve,” said City Attorney Chiu. “For years, he has profited off of vulnerable immigrants, taking their money while putting them in legal jeopardy. His actions are particularly egregious during a time of mass deportations and heightened fear in our immigrant communities. We know that immigration services are badly needed right now, but I want the public to understand that Lacayo is not legally allowed to provide immigration services of any kind. He willfully ignored multiple court orders, and we are seeking to end his predatory scam once and for all.”
Background
Lacayo & Associates has been operating in San Francisco since 1986. Leonard Lacayo is a notary public, but has never been licensed to practice law nor registered with the state as an immigration consultant. For years, Lacayo has falsely portrayed himself as an attorney and either provided services he was not qualified to provide or simply failed to provide any service at all. Despite being unqualified and unlicensed, Lacayo has tricked hundreds of vulnerable people into paying him to handle incredibly complex and high-stakes immigration matters.
In 2017, the City Attorney’s Office secured an injunction that prohibited Leonard Lacayo and Lacayo & Associates from providing any immigration-related services, and Lacayo was ordered to pay restitution and civil penalties.
Nevertheless, Lacayo violated the injunction and continued to provide immigration services. In 2022, the City Attorney’s Office had to bring a Motion to Enforce the injunction due to Lacayo’s failure to follow the law. The Court granted the City’s motion to enforce the injunction, which once again prohibited Lacayo & Associates from providing immigration services. The order extended the injunction for 5 years, and the Court imposed a $5,000 penalty on Lacayo.
Despite the 2022 order, Lacayo still meets with clients to offer advice on immigration-related matters, assesses the clients’ legal needs, and provides immigration services through attorneys and consultants who are embedded within his office. For over a year, the City gathered declarations, deposition testimony, bank records, and documentary evidence that Lacayo continues to violate the injunction. An undercover investigator with the City Attorney’s Office received immigration services from Lacayo, corroborating the documentary evidence. Lacayo has even received three cease and desist letters from the California State Bar directing him to stop providing legal services.
The City’s motion filed on June 18, 2025, seeks to enforce the 2017 injunction prohibiting Lacayo & Associates from providing immigration services and extend the injunction for an additional 5 years, leaving the injunction in place until September 2032. The City is also seeking additional penalties and attorney’s fees to recoup costs for investigating Lacayo’s conduct and enforcing the injunction for a second time.
The case is People of the State of California v. Leonard Lacayo, et al., San Francisco Superior Court, Case No. CGC-16-553699. The Motion to Enforce can be found here.
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