United States of America v. Yousif Abdulraouf Alhallaq

Cleveland, Ohio, criminal defense lawyer represented the Defendant charged with naturalization fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1425.

Yousif Abdulraouf Alhallaq, 47, of Canton, was born in Kuwait and entered the United States on an H1B visa in 2006. In 2011, he filed an application to become a permanent resident of the United States and was approved.
Alhallaq began work as an internal medical doctor in Northeast Ohio in 2012. Then, in December 2014, the defendant poisoned his girlfriend’s oatmeal with an abortion drug when she became pregnant with his child, in an attempt to terminate the pregnancy without her knowledge. Several years later, the victim learned the truth about the incident and reported him to police. On March 18, 2021, Alhallaq was indicted in the Stark County Court of Common Pleas and charged with one count of attempted murder and two counts of felonious assault for trying to purposely cause the termination of the victim’s pregnancy in 2014 which caused serious, physical harm to her and her unborn child. In September 2021, Alhallaq pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to four years in prison.

Before Alhallaq was indicted and sentenced for those charges in 2021, he mailed a federal application, Form N-400, in 2017 to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. In the application he answered “no” to the following questions:

14D - Were you ever involved in any way with badly hurting, or trying to hurt a person on purpose?
22 - Have you ever committed, assisted in committing, or attempted to commit a crime or offense for which you were not arrested?

Alhallaq continued with the U.S. citizenship application process in 2018 and was interviewed by an immigration officer to review the answers he submitted on his naturalization application. Under oath, the defendant verbally confirmed answers to questions 14D and 22 as “no” which matched those initially submitted by mail. On May 4, 2018, the defendant became a naturalized U.S. citizen during a ceremony in Stark County, Ohio.

Although Alhallaq knowingly committed acts of attempted murder and felonious assault by attempting to unlawfully terminate his girlfriend’s pregnancy, he nonetheless attested to federal officials that the information he provided was true and was subsequently granted U.S. citizenship.

The Defendant was found guilty by a jury and faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced.