2 men arrested in voter registration fraud scheme in Pinellas County, feds say

A Russian man and an Uzbekistan man living in Florida have been arrested on charges that they submitted 132 fraudulent voter registration applications to the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections.Dmitry Shushlebin, 45, a Russian citizen living in Miami Beach, and Sanjar Jamilov, 33, an Uzbekistan citizen living in St. Petersburg, are charged with one count each of conspiring to submit fraudulent voter registration applications and giving false information in registering to vote, according to a news release from the U.S. Justice Department. If convicted, the men face a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Investigators say the fake voter applications, submitted in February and March 2023, bore similar markers of fraud: They were submitted in envelopes with return and address labels that were identically formatted — even including the same typos — and contained repeating dates of birth and addresses and nearly identical social security numbers. Shushlebin and Jamilov also submitted change of address forms to the U.S. Postal Service to route all returning mail from the fraudulent applications to three locations in St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Fort Myers that the two men controlled, according to the release.Once Pinellas elections office staff compared the names to records at the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and Department of State, they confirmed that none of the applicants had ever received driver’s licenses or identification cards in Florida, according to a criminal complaint filed in the the Middle District of Florida.The office then issued rejection letters to each of the fraudulent applications.“Our office takes all forms of voter fraud very seriously, and we report any and all evidence that we have of it to the proper authorities, as we did in this case,” said Ashley McKnight-Taylor, a spokesperson for the elections office. “Voters can feel confident that our processes that we have in place are effective for protecting the integrity of elections.”The elections office informed the Florida Department of State Office of Election Crime and Security, which was created by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022 to battle voter fraud ahead of last year’s elections, before the U.S. United States Postal Inspection Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement took over the investigation.The postal inspection service’s forensic laboratory discovered Jamilov‘s fingerprints on some of the letters, and, on Dec. 4, a federal judge authorized four search warrants for Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple iCloud accounts belonging to Shushlebin and Jamilov. “A search of Shushlebin’s iCloud revealed hundreds of photographs of driver’s licenses in the names of other individuals, including many of the same names used in the 132 fraudulent voter registration applications,” the complaint states.Investigators found that one identity, purported to be a Michigan woman, actually contained a photo of a Russian theater actress.A financial investigation revealed that banking and other financial accounts had been created for many of the 132 identities used on the fraudulent voter registration applications, according to the complaint.The two men used some of these aliases to set up “straw companies” and make payments via Zelle, investigators believe.Shushlebin also used one alias to enter the United States through the Denver airport using a Russian passport with the name Ilia Bzhelichenko.During questioning, Shushlebin told investigators he accidentally took the passport, which belonged to a friend he was staying with while in Russia.

2 men arrested in voter registration fraud scheme in Pinellas County, feds say

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