How did a company with 17 employees manage to get 9 H1Bs?
Now, given everything else here I wouldn't be surprised if there was fraud involved in getting the H1B visas issued, but that's separate from the question of whether people who think they have H1B visas actually have H1B visas.
However, if the founders are willing to forge money transfer receipts, and given all the other hijinks in the post, I wouldn't put it beyond them to bring over engineers on a tourist visa, instruct them to not tell immigration they're coming to work for some BS reason, and then mislead them by telling them that their H1B is being processed when in fact it isn't. Or something along those lines.
I really feel bad for them, along with the author of the article.
Which also means that if they believed they have a H1B, they could have been misled into staying illegally one way or another (OPT has some reporting requirement, you have to notify your school every 6 months and anytime you change jobs/ locations etc).
i bet the ceo told them that the papers were still being processed and to get to work....ironically since he never paid them, he might be legally off the hook for immigration violations.