A federal court has stripped naturalized U.S. citizenship from a man who "violently extorted" his financial advisor 25 years ago, including holding him at gunpoint, after discovering the advisor was running a Ponzi scheme with his money, the Justice Department announced last week.
"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," said Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate, who works in the DOJ's civil division.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York revoked the citizenship of Michael Pizzuti, an Italian native, after finding that he had illegally procured it, the department said.
The court determined Pizzuti had committed crimes "involving moral turpitude and unlawful acts and had given false testimony about those crimes during his naturalization proceedings, all of which prevented him from establishing the good moral character necessary to naturalize. The court additionally found that Pizzuti obtained his naturalization through fraudulent concealment and willful misrepresentations of material fact relating to his crimes," a Justice Department press release says.
From July 1998 through August 2000, Pizzuti dealt in counterfeit money, trafficked contraband cigarettes and conspired to steal a truck and commit mail fraud, the department said, noting he was arrested and indicted for those crimes in December 2001, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment.
Online court records show Pizzuti pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States in that case. Charges against Pizzuti involving car theft, cigarette trafficking, counterfeiting and other alleged violations were dismissed.
"Then, between May 2001 and September 30, 2001, Pizzuti violently extorted his financial advisor after discovering that the advisor was running a Ponzi scheme with Pizzuti's money. Pizzuti broke into his house, held him at gunpoint, ordered him to maintain the Ponzi scheme until he had enough money to pay back Pizzuti's investment, and then destroyed computer records to hide his crimes," the release says.
For that "violent extortion and obstruction of justice," Pizzuti was convicted in 2005, after his naturalization, and sentenced to 17½ years in prison, according to the department.
Court records in a criminal case that appears connected to these incidents show Pizzuti was found guilty of conspiracy to commit extortion, attempted extortion and obstruction of justice in 2005; the charges were also described as interference with violence by threat or violence, and intimidation or force against witness.
The DOJ release doesn't identify the financial advisor, and the government's civil complaint in the citizenship case is not available for viewing in an online court database.
A superseding indictment filed in 2005 against Pizzuti and co-defendants indicated they brandished weapons in July 2001 at a private residence in White Plains, New York. The unidentified victim in the case "purported to be an investment advisor," according to the document. The defendants believed the victim had lost or taken their money, the indictment alleged.
On May 2, 2002, a few months after his first indictment and arrest, Pizzuti appeared at his naturalization interview and falsely testified under oath that he had never been arrested and had never committed a crime for which he had not been arrested, DOJ says. "Based on that false testimony, Pizzuti naturalized unlawfully on July 24, 2002," the DOJ release says.
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