MIAMI-DADE — A federal judge has stripped a Cuba-born Miami woman of her U.S. citizenship after the Justice Department established that she concealed her role in a money-laundering conspiracy tied to the theft of millions of dollars from a Florida tribal casino.
U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga revoked the naturalization of Milagros Marileisis Acosta Torres, 40, in a consent judgment entered October 14 in the Southern District of Florida. The parties had filed a joint motion for the judgment the day before, and the case ended without a trial.
The government filed its denaturalization complaint on June 8.
Acosta Torres became a citizen on November 6, 2015, after applying in August of that year. In her application and naturalization interview, she answered “no” when asked whether she had ever committed a crime or offense for which she had not been arrested. The Justice Department said that was false, because she had already taken part in a conspiracy to launder money stolen from a tribal casino.
The court found she obtained citizenship by concealing a material fact and making a willful misrepresentation.
The Casino Scheme
The underlying fraud targeted the Miccosukee Casino & Resort in western Miami-Dade County. According to federal prosecutors’ earlier case, casino video technicians, including her husband, tampered with gaming machines so they produced credit vouchers falsely showing wins.
Accomplices who did not work at the casino cashed the vouchers at floor ATMs and cashiers. The scheme ran from January 2011 through May 2015, and about $5.3 million was stolen.
The Justice Department says Acosta Torres moved proceeds through financial transactions designed to hide their fraudulent origin and avoid federal and state reporting requirements.
Prosecutors alleged she opened accounts and kept deposits below $10,000. She admitted laundering at least $147,970, which went toward vehicles, a Miami house and prepaid college plans for the couple’s children.
Acosta Torres was charged in July 2019 and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering in January 2020. She was sentenced to six months in federal prison and three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay nearly $150,000 in restitution.
The judgment revokes her naturalization retroactively to November 6, 2015, and cancels her naturalization certificate as of that date. Acosta Torres must surrender her certificate, copies, passports, passport cards, enhanced driver’s licenses and other citizenship documents within 10 days and make good-faith efforts to recover copies held by others.
A compliance hearing is set, and can be canceled if the government confirms full compliance.
The order does not direct her removal from the country or address her future immigration status, and the Justice Department did not say whether she faces deportation proceedings.
“Securing denaturalization is the final step to strip citizenship from those who conceal crimes or defraud the American people,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said.
Acosta Torres’ case was one of 17 naturalization-fraud cases the department announced in June.
