CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Thursday, October 29, that 18 more noncitizens have been charged in federal court with illegally registering and voting in North Carolina elections, bringing the number of people charged in the state this year to 30 — five days before the November 3 midterm elections.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Seventeen of the 18 are lawful permanent residents — green-card holders — and one, a Guatemalan man living in Robeson County, is described by prosecutors as being in the United States illegally. Sixteen were charged by grand-jury indictment and two by criminal information. Every charge is an allegation: the Justice Department's own release stresses that an indictment or information merely contains accusations and that all defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in court.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Three districts, one announcement
The cases were filed across all three of North Carolina's federal judicial districts: nine in the Eastern District, five in the Middle District and four in the Western District, the department said. They build on 12 earlier indictments in the Eastern District — 10 unveiled on October 15 and two from earlier in the year — taking that district's total to 21 and the statewide total to 30.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
“Illegal voting is just that: illegal,” said Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter in the department's release. “If you're not an American citizen, you cannot vote in our federal elections. We want to prevent illegal voting from occurring, which is why we've now charged 30 people just in North Carolina who have violated our laws by illegally registering to vote and illegally voting. We need to preserve the integrity of the ballot box by ensuring only those eligible are casting ballots.”
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The longest paper trails: registrations from 2000 and 2008
Prosecutors say some of the alleged voting histories stretch back decades. Gregory Eugene Wade, 64, a Bermuda native and lawful permanent resident living in Wake County, is accused of registering in 2000 and voting in 12 general elections — 2000 through 2024 — plus the 2002 and 2020 primaries. Elizabeth Margaret Crudup, 52, a Kenya native living in Harnett County, is accused of registering in 2008 and voting in nine general elections and nine primaries, the most recent a 2026 primary. Richard John Reid, 62, a United Kingdom native living in New Hanover County, is accused of registering in 2002 and voting in four general elections.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
The only defendant described as unlawfully present is Selvin Porfidio Gonzalez Escobar, 43, a Guatemalan national living in Robeson County, whom prosecutors accuse of registering in 2020 and voting in the 2020 and 2024 general elections. Jacqueline Yvonne Papandreou Brown, 63, a Singapore native and United Kingdom citizen living in Duplin County, is accused of registering in 2020 and voting in the November 2024 general election, Public Radio East reported. Two defendants no longer live in North Carolina: Amerigo Di Nolfi, 53, an Italy native and UK citizen now in Hampden County, Massachusetts, is accused of voting in New Hanover County in 2024, and Karl Anthony Wilkins, 62, a Jamaica native now in Fulton County, Georgia, is accused of voting in Wake County in the 2020, 2022 and 2024 general elections.
Source: Public Radio East
The Eastern District list is completed by Patricia Elena Valencia Cardona, 56, a Colombia native in Harnett County, and Taso Gretes, 58, a Greece native and Canadian citizen in New Hanover County. In the Middle District, prosecutors charged Adrianus Marinus Van Der Staak of the Netherlands, living in Seagrove; Saida Adali Hirachete Olivarez of Mexico, living in Reidsville; Juan Florencio Ramos of Cuba, living in Salisbury; and Phillip Alexander Carter of Barbados, living in Winston-Salem — each by indictment on two counts — while Yamila Avalos of Argentina, living in Concord, was charged by information with one count of voting by an alien. In the Western District, a Charlotte grand jury indicted Michael Agah, 74, of Nigeria; Luis Alberto DeJesus, 50, of the Dominican Republic, living in Conover; and Serge Christian Dupont, 57, of France — prosecutors allege Agah and Dupont voted on November 5, 2024, and DeJesus in early voting on October 30, 2024 — while Edread Ray Stanley, 63, of St. Kitts and Nevis, was charged by information with voting by an alien.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
What the charges carry — and what officials said
All but two of the defendants face two counts: falsely claiming U.S. citizenship in order to register or vote, which carries a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and voting by an alien, which carries a maximum of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. If anyone is convicted, a federal judge will set the sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors, the department said.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
“Protecting the integrity of our elections is fundamental to preserving our constitutional republic,” said U.S. Attorney Ellis Boyle for the Eastern District. U.S. Attorney Dan Bishop for the Middle District said his office “is committed to protecting the integrity of our elections,” and U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson for the Western District pointed to how close North Carolina races can be: in the state's 2025 municipal elections, he said, 14 races were decided by two votes, 15 by one vote and seven were tied. The cases are being investigated by the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). “The integrity of federal elections is essential to the health of our democracy,” said Reid Davis, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Charlotte Field Office, while HSI Carolinas Special Agent in Charge Mark M. Zito said election rules must be “applied consistently and enforced without fear or favor.”
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
Why green-card families are reading this closely
The detail that matters most to immigrant families — including North Carolina's Indian and Punjabi households — is who the defendants are: overwhelmingly, they are not people accused of crossing a border to vote, but long-settled lawful permanent residents, some registered for more than two decades, now facing federal criminal charges over ballots cast in the 2024 election and earlier. The charges relate to the 2024 election, not the contest now under way. The North Carolina round is part of a wider federal push that the department says produced roughly 160 such prosecutions nationwide between January 2025 and September 2026, and it follows separate noncitizen-voting cases announced this week in Nevada and Texas and an ICE arrest round — a different action from these court charges. Prosecutors and investigators say suspected noncitizen registrants are identified by cross-checking voter rolls against immigration records and other data, including the federal SAVE system; the accuracy of such data-matching is already being challenged in court in related election cases, and reporting on the announcement notes the State Board of Elections has yet to explain how the alleged registrations passed its verification process.
Source: Particle News
Lawful permanent residents may not register or vote in U.S. federal elections — only citizens may. The false-citizenship-claim count in these cases carries up to five years in prison. Anyone unsure whether they are registered, or who believes they registered in error, should check their status with their county board of elections before casting any ballot.
What happens next
The Justice Department release does not list arraignment or first court-appearance dates; each case will now proceed in the district where it was filed — Raleigh-area federal court for the Eastern District, the Middle District courts, and Charlotte for the Western District. The announcement lands in the final stretch of early voting before the November 3 midterms, in a swing state where federal and state officials are already fighting in court over election monitoring and voter-roll lists. Awaaz Punjab will report the first court outcomes — pleas, dismissals or convictions — as they are filed; until then, every name above is a defendant facing allegations, not a convicted voter.