WATERTOWN — A Watertown man will lose his American citizenship after lying about child molestation in the time period he applied for citizenship.
Gurpreet Singh, 37, was sentenced in U.S. District Court, Syracuse, on Tuesday to a three months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. He had been convicted of knowingly obtaining U.S. citizenship through unlawful naturalization in January.
Officials with the U.S. Attorney’s office said Mr. Singh, originally from India, repeatedly affirmed to United States Citizenship and Immigration authorities that he had not committed any crimes.
Immigration authorities learned that Mr. Singh sexually abused a 9-year-old child during the same time period he was applying for citizenship.
“Evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Mr. Singh deliberately failed to report his criminal activity to USCIS because he knew that USCIS would not have approved his naturalization application if the agency had known about his crimes,” the office said in a news release.
He was arrested by Watertown police the day after his naturalization ceremony in April 2012 and later pleaded guilty to a single count of sexual abuse of a minor child.
While on supervised release following his prison term, Mr. Singh will be required to register as a sex offender and will be prohibited from having direct contact with children under the age of 18, other than his own, and from going to places like libraries, parks and schools without prior permission from a probation officer.
This case was also investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Michael F. Perry and Robert S. Levine.