A federal jury in Miami has convicted a 57-year-old Cuban national of lying on her naturalization application to hide her role in a $4.6 million healthcare fraud scheme, a conviction that automatically voids the U.S. citizenship she was granted in 2018. Tania Rosa Rodriguez now faces up to 10 years in federal prison after jurors found she concealed her participation in the seven-year fraud conspiracy from immigration officials while applying to become a citizen.
According to the Department of Justice, Rodriguez applied for naturalization in 2017 and stated on her application that she had never committed a crime for which she had not been arrested — even though, prosecutors say, she was actively participating in the healthcare fraud conspiracy at the time. As reported by CBS News Miami, Rodriguez was previously convicted in federal court for her role in that scheme, which resulted in approximately $4.6 million in fraudulent healthcare claims. Homeland Security Investigations Miami is handling the underlying investigation.
A federal jury found Rodriguez guilty of one count of unlawful procurement of citizenship or naturalization, per the outlet's reporting. Because her conviction falls under 18 U.S.C. § 1425, federal law requires the presiding court to automatically revoke and declare void her citizenship, a mandatory consequence separate from whatever prison sentence a judge ultimately imposes, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
A Naturalization Form's High Stakes
The case turned on a single line of paperwork. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services requires every naturalization applicant to answer, on Form N-400, whether they have ever committed a crime or offense for which they were not arrested — an answer USCIS uses to evaluate whether an applicant meets the mandatory good moral character requirement, per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones, according to the CBS Miami report, said Rodriguez concealed her criminal conduct from the government while participating in the healthcare fraud conspiracy. He also said that American citizenship cannot be lawfully obtained through fraud and concealment, the outlet noted.
New Federal Unit Behind the Prosecution
The case was prosecuted by attorneys with the Border and Immigration Crimes Enforcement Section, a unit Reding Quiñones created in South Florida in November 2025 to combine narcotics, immigration, fraud, and violent crime expertise focused on border threats and immigration offenses in the region. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jackson Dering and Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Pierce are prosecuting the case, with Pierce having joined the district's new BICE Section directly from ICE's Office of the Principal Legal Advisor after being sworn in this past January, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
No sentencing date has been announced. A federal judge will determine Rodriguez's sentence after weighing the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors, per the CBS Miami report. In July, U.S. District Judge Rodolfo A. Ruiz II denied a motion from Rodriguez to dismiss her indictment over preindictment delay, clearing the case for trial under docket number 26-CR-20133-RAR, according to court records reviewed by CaseMine.
Part of a Broader Crackdown
Rodriguez's case fits a pattern federal prosecutors in South Florida have repeated in recent years. In September 2024, a federal jury in Miami convicted Cuban national Orlando Chavez of naturalization fraud under the same statute after he falsely claimed on his 2017 application that he had never committed an unarrested crime, concealing a prior child abuse incident — a case Hoodline previously covered. His 2018 naturalization was automatically revoked following his conviction, per the Department of Justice.
More recently, federal prosecutors in South Florida secured a court order revoking the citizenship of another resident who unlawfully obtained naturalization while concealing involvement in a $3.8 million COVID-19 relief fraud scheme, according to the Internal Revenue Service. Reding Quiñones has emphasized in that case that lying during naturalization forfeits immigration benefits, the agency noted.
The healthcare fraud underpinning Rodriguez's case also lands squarely within a region federal law enforcement has long treated as a hot spot. South Florida's outsized share of Medicare and healthcare fraud cases led the Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services to establish the nation's first Medicare Fraud Strike Force in Miami back in 2007, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Just this past June, Reding Quiñones announced criminal charges against 12 South Florida defendants tied to fraudulent healthcare schemes as part of the Department of Justice's 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, a nationwide effort that involved more than $4 billion in fraudulent claims, per the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General.
