Patel brought workers from India illegally, filed false IT returns.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: An Indian American man has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison after admitting to orchestrating a scheme over eight years that illegally brought Indian nationals into the United States.
Judge William H. Walls of the district court of New Jersey handed down the sentence to Sandipkumar Patel, 42, on Tuesday, various local news outlets reported. He is also being ordered to pay a fine of $50,000 and restitution in the amount of $423,452 to the Internal Revenue Service, according to a statement released by the U.S. Department of Justice.
The statement said Patel pleaded guilty on Sept. 4, 2014 to two counts of conspiring to defraud the United States and subscribing to a false income tax return.
Per NJ.com:
According to court documents filed in connection with his plea, from 2001 to 2009 Patel sponsored the visa applications of Indian nationals by falsely claiming that he would provide employment for them in the United States, the statement said.
The statement said Patel falsely certified on the visa applications that he would employ the migrants in various technical fields at several New Jersey companies, thereby facilitating their illegal entry into the country.
The scheme managed to garner tens of thousands of dollars from Indian migrants who entered the country under false visa applications, which are primarily on H-1B visas.
To disguise the scheme, Patel issued payroll checks and other payroll forms before requiring his victims to return the proceeds of the payroll checks and to further reimburse him for payroll tax expenses he incurred, according to the Department of Justice.
CBS New York reported Patel also overstated his payroll expenses on federal tax returns and underreported his tax obligation by more than $400,000.
2 Comments
If you investigate immigrants with last name as Patel, I am sure that 99% would be involved in some fraud or the other!
The H1B Visa program is destroying the American engineering profession, the backbone of the American middle class.
It should be terminated by Congress immediately.