The justice department enumerates recent instances of H-1B visa fraud that includes individuals and companies trying to bilk the immigration department with false documents.
The Department of Justice has come up with a fresh list of visa violators that includes violations such as fake jobs, fabricated work experience, tax manipulations and illegal maneuvering of money under the pretense of employee expenses.
The US Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta has enumerated offenders who were trying to bypass the mandatory requirements to misuse the popular work visa. The Firstpost reported that the list includes Sunila Dutt, 39, of Ashburn, Virginia, Loreto Kudera, 45, and Hazel Kudera, 43, a married couple from New York, George Mariadas Kurusu, 58, Hiral Patel, 34, Jersey City, New Jersey, Phani Raju Bhima Raju and Rohit Saksena, president and chief executive officer of Saks IT Group, LLC, an information technology (IT) staffing and consulting services provider in Manchester, New Hampshire.
“Sunila Dutt, a Virginia attorney, Hiral Patel, and Hari Karne, employees of IT staffing and consulting companies SCM Data (SCM) and MMC Systems (MMC), pled guilty on October 17, 2016, December 16, 2016, and February 14, 2017 respectively, to charges that they engaged an H-1B visa fraud conspiracy and then obstructed justice in an effort to cover up their wrongdoing,” The labor department’s investigative wing said. “On April 26, 2017, George Mariadas Kurusu, an Indian national, was sentenced to 11 months of confinement for his previous guilty plea to wire fraud, fraud in foreign labor contracting, false statements in an immigration matter, and witness tampering related to a scheme to defraud the H-1B visa program. Prior to his sentencing, Kurusu agreed to pay more than $53,000 in restitution to four victims of his scheme.”
The report elaborated that Rohit Saksena admitted to defrauding the Department of Labor’s H-1B program on May 1, 2017. It said that Saksena submitted false documents showing that he intends to hire foreign workers to work for Keytone Technologies Inc., a Cupertino, California,-based IT company. However, he has no contractual relationship with the tech company. Similarly, the Kuderas operated two companies, NYC Healthcare Staffing and LHK Consulting, to facilitate their fictitious schemes to bilk the immigration authorities. They were told to forfeit $1 million and were sentenced to 24 months of probation.
“Phani Raju Bhima Raju, president of iFuturistics, was sentenced on March 20, 2014, to four years in prison for his participation in a scheme to obtain fraudulent H-1B visas for foreign workers. Raju was also ordered to forfeit $1.5 million in criminal proceeds,” the report said.
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lock them up, strip them of their assets, then deport them after they have served their time.