Dmitry Shushlebin, a 45-year-old Russian citizen living in Miami Beach, was sentenced to six years in federal prison after pleading guilty in a scheme involving more than 100 fraudulent voter-registration forms filed in Pinellas County. Prosecutors said the filings helped create fake identities that were later used to defraud banks and lenders. Shushlebin was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $458,839.69 in restitution.
According to mysuncoast.com, prosecutors said Shushlebin recruited Sanjar Jamilov and others to submit fraudulent applications to the Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections in February and March 2023. The purpose, federal prosecutors said, was not to cast ballots but to create records that could support synthetic identities, according to the Tampa Free Press. Jamilov, whom that report identified as an Uzbekistani national, was among those Shushlebin allegedly recruited.
A Paper Trail Built for Deception
The fraudulent registrations formed part of a broader identity-theft operation, according to the Tampa Free Press. Prosecutors said Shushlebin used manufactured identities repeatedly to obtain credit cards and bank loans and targeted financial institutions hundreds of times with different synthetic identities, mysuncoast.com reported. He also allegedly created sham companies to support the multi-year financial fraud operation.
U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe said voting is one of the country’s most significant rights and responsibilities and that authorities would continue investigating threats to election integrity and prosecuting voting fraud, according to the Tampa Free Press.
What synthetic-identity fraud means
According to the Federal Reserve Board, synthetic identities combine real information, such as a legitimate Social Security number, with fictional details and can be used to commit payments fraud. Federal Reserve Financial Services says criminals can also assemble synthetic business identities from real or fictitious information to deceive financial institutions into providing credit, loans and other banking products. The Federal Reserve materials cited here explain how synthetic-identity fraud works and how it can affect banks and lenders, but they do not provide a case-specific estimate of the losses or number of identities involved in the Shushlebin prosecution. The figures in this case come from the federal criminal proceedings and the reporting cited above.
Guilty Plea Came a Day After New Charges
Federal prosecutors filed a four-count superseding information against Shushlebin on July 24, 2025. He pleaded guilty the next day to conspiracy to give false information in registering to vote and submit fraudulent voter registrations, wire fraud, making false statements and aggravated identity theft, according to mysuncoast.com. A. Tysen Duva said the scheme began shortly after Shushlebin entered the United States, the Tampa Free Press reported.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the case jointly, mysuncoast.com reported. FBI official Rodney Crawford said the bureau uses investigative tools and partnerships to detect and disrupt identity-theft crimes involving fraudulent registration applications. U.S. Postal Inspection Service official Bladismir Rojo said the agency would investigate people who use the mail to enrich themselves at others’ expense, according to the Tampa Free Press.
Prosecutors and Officials Behind the Case
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Lindsey Schmidt and Edward P. Sullivan prosecuted the case, with Sullivan serving as acting chief of the Criminal Division's Public Integrity Section and Schmidt working out of the Middle District of Florida, the Tampa Free Press reported. Assistant U.S. Attorney Suzanne C. Nebesky handled asset forfeiture in the case, according to that same reporting.
A Justice Department search-result snippet separately described Shushlebin as a 45-year-old Russian citizen living in Miami Beach who received the same six-year prison term and three years of supervised release, according to justice.gov. The scale of the underlying identity theft, prosecutors said, allowed Shushlebin to create synthetic or fake identities that appeared real after being used to submit more than 100 false voter registrations, the Tampa Free Press reported.
