An ex-U.S. immigration supervisor who “lived large” as he took bribes to give citizenship to ineligible aliens was ordered held without bail yesterday after a prosecutor shocked the defendant’s wife and children by disclosing that he had a second family.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcus Asner said Jimmie Ortega was the central player in a scheme that awarded at least 60 phony citizenships in return for bribes of between $1,500 and $4,000.

“We believe we are scratching the surface,” Mr. Asner said of what had been uncovered so far in a 10-month-old investigation of whether Mr. Ortega teamed with others to grant citizenship to people who could not otherwise pass tests.

Mr. Asner said investigators were reviewing every case Mr. Ortega, 54, of Queens, had worked on over the last 11 years to learn how many bribes had been paid and false citizenships awarded.

“A high proportion of the ones we looked at turn out to be bribery situations,” the prosecutor told U.S. Magistrate Judge Debra C. Freeman, who ordered Mr. Ortega held without bail, citing what she said seemed to be a lack of trust and candor.

Mr. Asner said Mr. Ortega was paying $1,200 a month to care for what amounted to a second wife and two children.

“He has a second family, which I assume his first family knows nothing about,” Mr. Asner said. “This is the sort of person you’re dealing with. … This is someone who can’t be trusted with his word.”

As Mr. Asner spoke, some of Mr. Ortega’s children in the courtroom seemed stunned, putting their hands over their open mouths. One of them began to cry. When Mr. Ortega walked out of court, his family returned his slight smile with glares.

A current immigration supervisor also was charged in the citizenship case, along with several brokers and people accused of paying bribes to become citizens. The prosecutor said the government had several cooperating witnesses and extensive telephone records linking Mr. Ortega to those who paid bribes.

The prosecutor said bribes cleared the way for people otherwise not entitled to citizenship to receive it without being interviewed or demonstrating they could speak English or pass the required civics and U.S. history examinations.

To keep Mr. Ortega incarcerated pending trial on charges that carry a potential prison term of up to 10 years, Mr. Asner said Mr. Ortega was untrustworthy, in part because of his two families, and would flee to Panama, where he has relatives.

Mr. Ortega’s lawyer, Lee Ginsberg, said his client would not flee, in part because his $4,000 in monthly benefits from a military pension, an immigration pension and disability payments would be jeopardized.

Mr. Ginsberg cited Mr. Ortega’s “service to the United States,” including working in the U.S. Army for 21 years and in immigration for 11 years, all without an arrest to blot his record.

But Mr. Asner said Mr. Ortega had lived a life of lies, including telling authorities after his arrest that he had only taken one pleasure trip in 2000 when he had actually traveled to Panama in 2001, 2002 and 2005 and to the Dominican Republic in 2001.

Mr. Ortega was “willing to play fast and loose and willing to act in his own interest,” Mr. Asner said, again citing the two families. He said government investigators had spoken to the second wife and checked the birth certificates of her two children.

“Our sense is that Mr. Ortega lived large. He was very flashy. He had two lives,” Mr. Asner said as Mr. Ortega shook his head.

Mr. Ortega retired as a supervisory district adjudications officer with the naturalization unit of the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services in New York in the spring after he suffered a stroke, his lawyer said.

Mr. Ginsberg said Mr. Ortega now walks with a limp and has partial paralysis.