19 foreign nationals charged with illegal voting in North Carolina

A federal grand jury returned indictments against 19 foreign nationals accused of committing voting-related crimes in North Carolina during the 2016 general election period.

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The foreign nationals charged with voting by alien are:

• Jose Jaime Ramiro-Torres, 52, of El Salvador
• Juan Francisco Landeros-Mireles, 64, of Mexico
• Alessandro Cannizzaro, 46, of Italy
• Dieudonne Soifils, 71, of Haiti
• Hyo Suk George, 69, of Korea
• Merius Jean, 54, of Haiti
• Rosemarie Angelika Harris, 60, of Germany
• Daniel Tadeusz Romanowski, 39, of Poland

If convicted of voting by an alien they each face a maximum of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Court documents obtained by the ABC 11 I-Team show five of these individuals are accused of voting in multiple general elections dating to 2010. Investigators say in 2012 the North Carolina Board of Elections registered Romanowski to vote "despite not having answered the question in his voter registration application as to whether he was a United States citizen." Investigators also say the board of elections registered Harris to vote in 2016 "despite not having signed the registration application." Documents show illegal votes were cast in Wake, Cumberland, Johnston and Wilson among other counties.

A grand jury also charged the following foreign nationals with falsely claiming United States citizenship in order to register to vote, and voting by alien:

• Jose Cruz Solano-Rodriguez, 41, of Mexico
• Guadalupe Espinosa-Pena, 63, of Mexico
• Sarah Emilia Silverio-Polanco, 35, of the Dominican Republic
• Elizabeth Nene Amachaghi, 44, of Nigeria
• Maria Rufina Castillo-Boswell, 31, of Philippines
• Dora Maybe Damatta-Rodriguez, 64, of Panama
• Elvis David Fullerton, 54, of Grenada
• Olive Agatha Martin, 71, of Guyana
• Kaoru Sauls, 54, of Japan

If convicted of false claim of U.S. citizenship in order to vote and voting by alien, they would face a maximum of six years in prison and a $350,000 fine.

Additionally, a federal grand jury in Wilmington returned an Indictment charging an eighteenth defendant, Diana Patricia Franco-Rodriguez, 26, of Mexico, with fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents, and voting by an alien. And a federal grand jury in Wilmington returned an Indictment charging Denslo Allen Paige, 66, with aiding and abetting Espinosa-Pena in falsely claiming United States citizenship in order to register to vote.