BOISE – Florin Fleischer, 33, of Romania, pled guilty today in United States District Court to a one count information charging him with unlawful procurement of citizenship, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced.

According to the plea agreement, on November 21, 2003, Fleischer entered into a fraudulent marriage with a United States citizen with the sole purpose of evading immigration laws and obtaining immigration benefits. On January 30, 2004, Fleischer filed an application with the Department of Homeland Security/Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), seeking lawful permanent resident status based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen. On August 13, 2004, the application was approved and Fleischer was granted conditional permanent resident status. On March 27, 2007, Fleischer’s petition to remove the conditions of permanent resident status was approved. On January 11, 2010, Fleischer filed an application for naturalization, wherein he provided materially false statements, by stating that he had never committed a crime for which he was not arrested, and that he had never provided false or misleading information to a U.S. Government Official in an application for an immigration benefit. USCIS approved the application and Fleischer became a U.S. citizen on June 10, 2010, in Boise.

The charge is punishable by up to ten years in prison, a maximum fine of $250,000, and up to three years of supervised release.

Fleischer is scheduled to be sentenced on January 14, 2013, before U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge at the federal courthouse in Boise.

Fleischer is the second Romanian to plead guilty to the charge. Last month, Ramona Alina Fenesan pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully procuring United States citizenship. She is scheduled to be sentenced on December 5, 2012.

The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).