A non-U.S. citizen who cast a ballot in Wyoming in the 2024 presidential election pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal voting crime, a year after Wyoming officials began unraveling how he got onto the voter rolls in the first place.
Maksim Sergeevich Shakirov, 30, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Cheyenne to voting in a federal election despite knowing he wasn't an American citizen.
On Nov. 5, 2024 — Election Day — Shakirov, “an alien, knowing that he was not a citizen of the United States,” voted in person in Carbon County in an election that included races for president, vice president, U.S. Senate and U.S. House, according to an Information filed in federal court.
His ballot wasn't stopped at the polls. It was counted.
Shakirov's citizenship would not come under scrutiny until the following year, after Wyoming gained access to a federal immigration database that state officials now use to check the citizenship status of people on its voter rolls.
Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray confirmed to Cowboy State Daily that Shakirov is the previously unnamed Carbon County voter his office identified in October 2025 through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program, or SAVE.
“This was immediately referred to the Carbon County Clerk and law enforcement for removal from the voter rolls and further investigation,” Gray said.
He Checked The Box
Carbon County Sheriff's Detective Dale Miller began investigating after reviewing a letter from Carbon County Clerk Lisa Smith seeking to verify Shakirov's citizenship after his vote.
The records Miller reviewed showed Shakirov had done more than simply wind up on a voter list.
On his voter registration form, Shakirov checked the box reading, “I am a citizen of the United States,” wrote Miller.
He also signed Wyoming's registration oath, swearing that he was a U.S. citizen, a Wyoming and county resident and that the information he provided was true and accurate.
The form included a Wyoming driver's license number.
By the time officials began questioning Shakirov's citizenship, however, his ballot from the 2024 election had already been counted.
Miller called Shakirov on Nov. 24, 2025.
“I explained the situation to him and asked him if he would talk to me about it,” he wrote.
Shakirov didn't deny voting.
He told Miller it was the first time he had ever voted in a United States election. He also said he came to the U.S. when he was about 6 years old and had held a green card since around that time.
Formally known as a Permanent Resident Card, a green card allows a noncitizen to live and work permanently in the United States. It does not confer U.S. citizenship or the right to vote in federal elections.
Hammering Election Integrity
There is no definitive national count of noncitizens who illegally voted in the 2024 election. A preliminary U.S. Census Bureau analysis released this year identified more than 24,000 voter records from the 2020 election belonging to people who were noncitizens at the time. More than 32 million voter records remained to be analyzed.
The report is not a definitive count of illegal votes, and its methodology has drawn criticism.
Shakirov was discovered amid a much larger election-integrity campaign Gray has made a defining issue of his tenure as Wyoming's secretary of state.
The tool that ultimately flagged Shakirov wasn't available to Gray's office for voter-list maintenance when Shakirov voted in November 2024.
Wyoming lawmakers changed that during the 2025 legislative session.
House Bill 318, which became House Enrolled Act 62, gave the Secretary of State's Office explicit authority to use information from SAVE to verify whether people on Wyoming's voter rolls are U.S. citizens. The law also allows the office to cross-reference voter records with information from the Wyoming Department of Transportation identifying people who have indicated they are not U.S. citizens.
Gray subsequently signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS giving Wyoming access to SAVE for voter-list maintenance.
At the time, he called enhanced voter-list maintenance “crucial to election integrity” and said SAVE would help ensure “only citizens are on the voter registration list.”
It was one piece of a broader package.
Other election laws that took effect in 2025 included documentary proof of citizenship and residency to register to vote, a prohibition on foreign funding of ballot measures, restrictions on private funding for election administration and a ban on ranked-choice voting.
Gray hasn't slowed down since.
His 2026 election agenda has included calls for paper ballots as Wyoming's default, banning ballot drop boxes and ballot harvesting, tightening voter ID requirements, requiring hand-count verification in recounts and audits, and amending the Wyoming Constitution concerning dual citizens voting and holding office.
“Voter list maintenance has been a huge priority of our administration since day one, and a key part of the Election Integrity Reform Agenda I released in 2025,” Gray told Cowboy State Daily about the Shakirov case.
Now Prove It
The checks soon produced results.
In October 2025, Gray announced that his office found three active Wyoming voter registrations matching people federal immigration records identified as non-U.S. citizens.
They were in Carbon, Lincoln and Teton counties.
At the time, Gray didn't publicly identify any of them.
His office later announced all three had been removed from Wyoming's voter rolls and referred for criminal investigation.
Gray now confirms Shakirov was the Carbon County case.
Then in March, Gray announced another active voter registration — this time in Johnson County — matching someone identified by USCIS as a non-U.S. citizen.
“Only United States citizens and only Wyoming residents should be voting in Wyoming elections — period,” Gray said when announcing that referral.
Wyoming already required voters to be U.S. citizens when Shakirov registered and voted. Applicants were required to affirm their citizenship and sign the voter registration oath — both things the affidavit says Shakirov did.
What Wyoming did not require before the 2024 election was documentary proof of citizenship.
That requirement arrived in 2025 under House Enrolled Act 57. Wyoming now accepts specified documents to establish citizenship, including qualifying driver's licenses or identification cards, U.S. passports, birth certificates and naturalization documents.
Shakirov therefore voted in the gap between a system that required a person to swear he was a citizen and the newer one that requires a new voter to prove it.
Federal Case Followed
Federal prosecutors eventually charged Shakirov with falsely and willfully representing himself as a U.S. citizen.
By this month, however, prosecutors and Shakirov's defense attorney were discussing a resolution.
After an Oct. 16 status conference, the attorneys told the court they had a “potential agreement” they expected to present before Oct. 23. Otherwise, both sides said they were ready for a Nov. 2 jury trial.
On Friday, prosecutors filed a new Information charging Shakirov under 18 U.S.C. §611 with voting as an alien.
Four days later, he pleaded guilty.
The plea agreement isn't publicly available on the federal court docket. Neither is a prosecutor's statement filed before Tuesday's hearing.
That leaves unanswered what punishment prosecutors will recommend and what ultimately will happen to Shakirov's original false-citizenship charge.
The voting offense carries a maximum of one year in prison, a fine of up to $100,000 and as much as one year of supervised release.
Shakirov was scheduled to go before a jury Nov. 2. After his guilty plea, the court vacated that trial.
Chief U.S. District Judge Kelly Rankin will sentence him Jan. 14, 2027, in Cheyenne.
Shakirov is represented by Assistant Federal Public Defender Julie Withers.
Cowboy State Daily reached out to Assistant U.S. Attorney Lance Johnston, who is prosecuting Shakirov, seeking additional information about the investigation, Shakirov's vote and what sentence prosecutors will recommend. Johnston did not return calls before publication.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
