Indian-American businessman Debashis Ghosh will lose his US citizenship due to past fraud.
Debashis Ghosh, a 62-year-old Indian-American businessman, will likely lose his US citizenship when the Justice Department moved to strip him and 11 other individuals of their citizenship.
Ghosh committed wire fraud before and after obtaining US citizenship in 2012. He was convicted after his naturalization but concealed the crime during the naturalization process.Before Debashis Ghosh was naturalized, he conspired to defraud investors of $2.5 million intended to build an aircraft maintenance facility. After naturalization, Ghosh, an Indian citizen, continued his fraudulent scheme, misrepresenting the investor’s financing position and filing, the document said.But in his 2012 naturalization application and interview, Ghosh claimed he had never committed a crime or a crime for which he was not arrested.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, a naturalized U.S. citizen may have his citizenship revoked, and his certificate of naturalization revoked, if naturalization was obtained unlawfully, by concealment of a material fact, or by intentional misrepresentation.
The denaturalization complaint against Ghosh alleged that he was subject to denaturalization because during the period when he was legally required to demonstrate good moral character, he committed a crime involving “moral honor, committed unlawful acts that reflected negatively on his moral character, and testified falsely about his crime.”In addition, Ghosh intentionally misrepresented the material fact of his crime during the naturalization proceedings.
Who is Debashis Ghosh?
Debashis Ghosh entered the United States several times on various nonimmigrant visas starting in 1991. In 2001, his employer filed for his green card. In 2012, Ghosh applied for citizenship. He was asked flatly whether he had committed a crime or a crime for which he had not been arrested, the Justice Department said. “No,” he said. He maintained his position in all other subsequent interviews and became an American citizen.In 2016, he and a co-conspirator were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud that occurred from 2010 to 2014.
In 2017, Ghosh was convicted.
What is fraud?
Co-conspirators Keith Eric Jergensen and Ghosh were co-CEOs of Chicago-based Verdant Capital Group. New York-based Laurentian Aerospace Corporation has retained Verdant to raise money for an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul facility to be built at the former U.S. Air Force base in Plattsburgh. Jergensen and Ghosh asked Laurentian to invest $2.5 million in seed money for the project.
They and Laurentian agreed that these funds would remain in Wells Fargo’s account and could not be transferred without Laurentian’s permission.Jergensen and Ghosh embezzled an additional $2.4 million in funds entrusted to them by other companies. Laurentian, relying on funds contributed by its board members and an outside investor, transferred $2.5 million to Wells Fargo’s account in December 2010.
Five days later, Jergensen and Ghosh began transferring money from the account without Laurentian’s permission, and by March 2011, they had transferred all of $2.5 million from the account.Jergensen and Ghosh used Laurentian’s $2.5 million to pay Verdant’s expenses including employees, contractors, and to pay others. The duo then spent several years falsely assuring Laurentian and its investors that their money was safe and secure, with Jergensen going so far as to draft a memorandum of understanding intended to show that Laurentian’s funds were in a secure bank account at Wells Fargo.The victim investors included a retired US Air Force colonel, a former New York City deputy mayor, a retired law partner and several retired executives from the financial and airline industries.
