So It Begins: FL Fraudster Has Naturalized Citizenship Revoked

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This began as a COVID-era fraud case, but what it ended up as should strike fear in the heart of every Somali Learing Center hustler and every Armenian hospice provider.

…For the year between April 2020 and the next May, 25-year-old Joff Stenn Wroy Philossaint of Fort Lauderdale, FL, had himself a schweet little scheme going with COVID loan applications and all the various businesses he had registered in his name.

… In total, Philossaint and his co-conspirators prepared and submitted 40 fraudulent loan applications, obtaining approximately $3.8 million in loan proceeds. Philossaint personally received approximately $549,000 through the scheme in the form of loan proceeds and kickbacks.

This is where it gets really interesting. Thanks to a quirk in immigration law, if you are in the middle of criminal activity when you apply for your citizenship, you can also be charged with submitting a fraudulent application.

…On Dec. 15, 2020, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer interviewed Philossaint about his naturalization application. During the interview, Philossaint “falsely stated” that he had never committed a crime for which he had not been arrested and that he had never made misrepresentations to receive a public benefit such as the PPP loans in the United States, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

In 2023, a federal judge sentenced him to 50 months.

That would have been the end of the story in most administrations, but not in this one. In February of this year, the Justice Department petitioned the court for an order revoking Philossaint's citizenship, and it was formally stripped yesterday.

… "United States citizenship is one of the greatest privileges our nation can offer, and it must be earned honestly," U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones said in a statement. "This defendant built his path to citizenship on false statements while stealing millions from programs meant to keep small businesses alive during the pandemic. The court’s order revoking his citizenship restores accountability and reinforces a simple principle: If you lie to obtain immigration benefits and commit federal crimes, you will lose what you unlawfully gained."

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