A federal judge in Miami entered a judgment revoking the U.S. citizenship of Cuban-born Milagros Marileisis Acosta Torres, ruling that she obtained naturalization by concealing a material fact and willfully misrepresenting information on her application. The judgment, issued October 14, followed her role in laundering proceeds from a fraud scheme at the Miccosukee Casino & Resort, according to Miami Herald.
A Scheme That Drained Millions From a Western Miami-Dade Casino
Acosta Torres became a naturalized U.S. citizen on November 6, 2015, but prosecutors say she had already helped her husband and accomplices steal from the Miccosukee Casino & Resort in western Miami-Dade through a scheme built on fraudulent credit vouchers. According to the Miami Herald, the Justice Department has pegged the total theft at about $5.3 million, though the paper’s earlier reporting on the original criminal case cited a figure of $5.2 million stolen over nearly four and a half years, from January 2011 until May 27, 2015. That earlier Herald account also detailed how Acosta Torres and co-defendant Yohander Jorrin Melhen helped launder the money by depositing two $9,000 checks into an account held solely in Acosta Torres’s name.
Acosta Torres conducted financial transactions involving the stolen proceeds specifically designed to disguise their fraudulent origin and dodge federal and state reporting requirements, per the government’s account. She ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in the Southern District of Florida and was convicted in 2020, receiving a six-month federal prison sentence, three years of supervised release, and an order to pay nearly $150,000 in restitution, according to Casino.org. It remains unclear whether she has completed those restitution payments.
The Lie Buried in a Citizenship Application
The case against her citizenship hinged on a single false answer. When Acosta Torres applied for naturalization on August 19, 2015, she was asked whether she had ever committed a crime for which she had not been arrested — and she falsely replied no, per the Justice Department’s account relayed by Casino.org. That answer, prosecutors argued, concealed her ongoing participation in the casino fraud conspiracy at the exact moment she was seeking U.S. citizenship.
Federal law allows the government to pursue civil denaturalization specifically in cases where citizenship was obtained through concealment of a material fact or willful misrepresentation, a standard spelled out in 8 U.S.C. § 1451. The Justice Department filed its civil denaturalization complaint against Acosta Torres on June 8, as reported by U.S. Department of Justice, setting the legal process in motion more than a decade after she took her citizenship oath.
From Paused Talks to a Negotiated Judgment
The court resolved the denaturalization case through a consent judgment jointly sought by the government and Acosta Torres, rather than after a contested trial. The parties filed their motion on October 13; the court entered judgment for the United States on Count III and dismissed the remaining counts as moot, according to Miami Herald. Earlier, they had jointly requested a pause in discovery, and the judge closed the case temporarily while allowing either side to seek reopening if negotiations failed…