The Justice Department announced on Apr. 10 that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has revoked the naturalized citizenship of Michael Pizzuti, a native of Italy, after finding he illegally obtained his status as a U.S. citizen.
The case is significant because it involves both criminal activity and fraudulent misrepresentation during the naturalization process, raising questions about safeguards in place to ensure only those with good moral character are granted citizenship.
According to court findings, Pizzuti committed several crimes from July 1998 through August 2000, including dealing in counterfeit money, trafficking contraband cigarettes, conspiring to steal a truck, and mail fraud. He was arrested and indicted on December 5, 2001, pleaded guilty to these charges, and was sentenced to fifteen months in prison. Between May and September 2001—before his naturalization—Pizzuti violently extorted his financial advisor by breaking into his home at gunpoint after discovering the advisor was running a Ponzi scheme with Pizzuti’s money. He forced the advisor to continue the scheme until he could recover his investment and destroyed computer records related to these actions. For this conduct, Pizzuti was convicted in 2005 (after becoming a citizen) and sentenced to seventeen-and-a-half years in prison.
Despite being under indictment at the time of his naturalization interview on May 2, 2002—less than five months after his arrest—Pizzuti falsely testified under oath that he had never been arrested or committed any crime for which he had not been arrested. This false testimony led to him unlawfully obtaining U.S. citizenship on July 24, 2002.
Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate said: “Violent criminals like this have no place in our society, and when they lie about those crimes to obtain U.S. citizenship, this Administration will stop at nothing to correct that travesty.”
The investigation into Pizzuti’s case involved Homeland Security Investigations within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as ICE’s Office of Principal Legal Advisor. The civil prosecution was conducted jointly by the Civil Division’s Office of Immigration Litigation Affirmative Litigation Unit and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
