Three Indian-origin Americans, running a staffing company in California’s San Jose, have pleaded guilty to committing H1B visa fraud by submitting bogus job offerings to foreign nationals.

Kishore Dattapuram of Santa Clara, California, Kumar Aswapathi of Austin, Texas, and Santosh Giri of San Jose, were each charged in an indictment filed in February 2019.

The trio were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and 10 counts of substantive visa fraud.

Aswapathi pleaded guilty to all counts in October 2020, Giri pleaded guilty to all counts on October 28 this year, and Dattapuram pleaded guilty this week.

Notably, a statement released by the US Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California, states that Dattapuram and Aswapathi owned and operated Nanosemantics, Incorporated, a staffing firm headquartered in San Jose that provided skilled employees to technology companies in the Bay Area.

Under its agreements with the companies and the employees it placed, Nanosemantics received a commission for workers placed at client companies. 

Giri worked closely with Nanosemantics and was also the owner of a separate business, LexGiri, a legal process outsourcing firm that served as a “remote-virtual corporate immigration specialist” for companies.

In connection with its staffing work, Nanosemantics regularly submitted H1B petitions for foreign workers. 

Through this visa programme, foreign workers obtain temporary authorisation to live and work for employers in the United States.

And in order to secure an H1B visa, an employer or other sponsor must submit a Form I-129 petition to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). 

Following this, a petition and associated documentation must confirm the existence and duration of the job waiting for the worker, and describe key details including the wages associated with the position.

Visa fraud committed overseas

The release mentions that Dattapuram admitted to working with Aswapathi and Giri to submit fraudulent H1B applications that falsely represented that foreign workers had specific jobs waiting for them at designated end-client companies when in fact the jobs did not exist.

On multiple occasions, Dattapuram paid companies to be listed as end-clients for the foreign workers, even though he knew the workers would never work for those employers.

As per the release, the defendants admitted that the goal of the scheme was to allow Nanosemantics to obtain visas for job candidates before securing jobs for them, thereby allowing them to place those workers with employers as soon as those jobs were available, rather than waiting for the visa application process to conclude, and giving them an unfair advantage over its competitors.

The court will announce Dattapuram and Giri’s sentencing on February 24, 2025, while Aswapathi has a status regarding sentencing on November 25 this year.

Each of them faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 (₹2.11 crore) for each visa fraud count, and a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 on the conspiracy count.