JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced today that a Ukrainian national in Jefferson City, Mo., and an El Paso, Texas, woman have pleaded guilty in federal court to their roles in a marriage fraud conspiracy so that he could remain in the United States.
Oleksandr Nikolayevich Druzenko, also known as “Alex," 35, of Jefferson City, pleaded guilty today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Matt J. Whitworth. Co-defendant Patricia Anne Ewalt, 63, of El Paso, pleaded guilty to the same charge on Aug. 5, 2015.
Druzenko and Ewalt were married on June 22, 2007, in Jefferson City. Druzenko is a Ukrainian national who entered the United States on a student visa in August 2004 and attended college in Missouri and elsewhere. He was employed at the Missouri Office of Administration in Jefferson City at the time of the Oct. 3, 2012, indictment.
In 2007, Druzenko’s student visa was expiring and he would soon have to leave the United States. After two failed attempts to persuade U.S. citizens to marry him so that he could remain in the country, Ewalt agreed to marry him.
Druzenko and Ewalt, along with co-defendants James Douglas Barding, 62, of Jefferson City, and Darya Chernova, 40, a citizen of Ukraine who currently resides in Chandler, Ariz., entered an agreement to unlawfully deceive the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service in matters regarding immigration and naturalization. According to today’s plea agreement, they conspired to arrange a fraudulent marriage between Druzenko and Ewalt so that he could remain in the United States in violation of the law.
Druzenko and Ewalt falsely claimed that they resided together, when, in fact, Druzenko and Ewalt did not live with each other. Druzenko and Ewalt each admitted that they knowingly submitted documents that were materially false and would serve to deceive the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service into believing Druzenko’s marriage to Ewalt was genuine. They also admitted that they submitted fraudulent documents so that Druzenko could achieve resident status in the United States.
Barding and Chernova have pleaded guilty to their roles in a marriage fraud conspiracy aimed at enabling Chernova, with whom Barding had a long-running affair, to remain in the United States and seek citizenship.
As a result of his fraudulent marriage to Ewalt, and the submission of false material statements to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, Druzenko was allowed to remain in the United States and gained permanent resident status when in fact he should not have been allowed to remain in the country and did not lawfully qualify for any adjustment to status.
Under federal statutes, Druzenko and Ewalt are each subject to a sentence of up to five years in federal prison without parole, plus a fine up to $250,000. Sentencing hearings will be scheduled after the completion of presentence investigations by the United States Probation Office.
Today’s guilty plea may have consequences with respect to Druzenko’s immigration status because this is considered a removable offense. Removal and other immigration consequences are the subject of a separate proceeding; however, because Druzenko is pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, removal is presumptively mandatory.
This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony P. Gonzalez. It was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Jefferson City, Mo., Police Department.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
