Syracuse woman, 66, charged with voting illegally after learning she was German-born

Federal prosecutors have charged Marva Cook, a 66-year-old former Syracuse University basketball standout, with voting as a noncitizen in 2022. Cook says she believed she was a U.S. citizen until she found a German birth certificate while searching for her biological mother.

Federal prosecutors in the Northern District of New York have charged Marva Cook, 66, of Syracuse with one misdemeanor count of voting by an alien. The complaint alleges she knowingly cast a ballot in the 2022 general election while holding a green card rather than U.S. citizenship.

Cook was born in Germany and brought to the United States at about age 2, where she was adopted, according to Central Current, a Syracuse nonprofit newsroom. She told Homeland Security Investigations agents in an Oct. 5 interview that she had always believed she was a citizen and only discovered her German birth certificate while searching for her biological mother.

According to the charging document, her adoptive parents filed an immigrant visa application for her in 1962. In 2020 she legally changed her name from Mona Maria Kuehn to Marva Marie Cook and applied for an updated green card.

Shackled in court

A view of Syracuse, New York

Cook surrendered to federal agents on Wednesday, accompanied by her attorney, Paul Tuck, and a group of supporters, and appeared before Judge Mitchell Katz at the federal courthouse in Syracuse. A prosecutor agreed that she could be released while the case proceeds. Cook said the shackles used during the roughly 14-minute hearing aggravated a torn meniscus.

The charge carries up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000, and a conviction could also put her at risk of deportation. Tuck told The Associated Press that no hearings or filing deadlines are scheduled and no immigration proceedings are pending.

'Voter fraud is rampant,' prosecutor says

First Assistant U.S. Attorney John A. Sarcone III, whose office is prosecuting the case, said the arrest showed that "voter fraud is rampant" in New York. The Department of Homeland Security said it "cannot and will not allow the votes of American citizens" to be diluted by noncitizen voting.

Supporters describe a very different person. Cook led Syracuse University's women's basketball team in scoring in the 1979-80 season and still holds the school's single-season steals record. She worked for about two decades as a caretaker at Loretto and has spent the past eight years at the YMCA, coordinating children's programs.

"If the government wanted to make a case, they chose the wrong person," said the Rev. Fred Daley of All Saints Church, where Cook is a parishioner. Studies and audits have repeatedly found noncitizen voting to be rare. The case comes as federal prosecutors step up such charges nationwide, including against more than two dozen legal permanent residents in California this week and 10 people in Minnesota weeks earlier.

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Syracuse woman, 66, charged with voting illegally after learning she was German-born