John H. Durham, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, today announced that a federal grand jury in New Haven has returned an eight-count indictment charging ARASH VAKSHOURI, 40, of Las Vegas, Nevada, with submitting false documents to a government agency and aggravated identity theft.
The indictment was returned on May 8, 2019, and Vakshouri was arrested in Las Vegas on June 20. He appeared today before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert M. Spector in New Haven, entered a plea of not guilty, and was released on a $50,000 bond.
As alleged in the indictment, between January and May 2017, Vakshouri sent a total of seven fraudulent letters to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Connecticut purporting to be from two individuals who had applied to USCIS to become legal residents of the U.S. in March 2016. The letters, which included the victims’ names, passport numbers, application numbers and alien file numbers, fraudulently requested the withdrawal or cancellation of the victims’ applications for legal permanent resident status in the U.S.
The indictment charges Vakshouri with seven counts of submitting a false document, an offense that carries a maximum term of imprisonment of five years on each count, and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory consecutive term of imprisonment of two years.
U.S. Attorney Durham stressed that an indictment is not evidence of guilt. Charges are only allegations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
This matter is being investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Manchester Police Department. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel J. Gentile.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
