3 sentenced for roles in marriage fraud conspiracies

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.  — A Jefferson City attorney was among three people sentenced in two separate marriage fraud conspiracies.

Sixty-three-year-old James Douglas Barding was sentenced Monday to one month in prison and a year of supervised release. He was also fined $3,000. Prosecutors say he persuaded a U.S. citizen to marry Darya Chernova, a Ukranian citizen with whom Barding was having an affair, so she could “remain in the United States and seek citizenship.” The couple has two children.

Prosecutors say the U.S. citizen and Chernova claimed that on federal forms that he, not Barding, was the father of Chernova’s children.

The U.S. citizen was never charged in the case, and Barding’s law license was suspended by the Missouri Supreme Court in October.

The Jefferson News Tribune reports that Chernova, who currently lives in Chandler, Arizona, was sentenced Monday to three years of probation.

In a separate case, Patricia Anne Ewalt, of El Paso, Texas, was sentenced Monday to three years of probation. She pleaded guilty in August 2015 to marrying Oleksandr Nikolayevich Druzenko, a Ukrainian citizen, solely to allow him to stay in the U.S. Druzenko was sentenced in November to time served. He has returned to Ukraine.

U.S. Attorney Tammy Dickinson said Barding and Chernova conspired to have Druzenko and Ewalt get married.

Dickinson said that the investigations into the marriages began after Chernova’s husband’s ex-girlfriend approached law enforcement about what she believed to be a fraudulent marriage.