Couple Pleads Guilty to $20M Visa Fraud Involving Indian Workers
justice.gov
justice.gov
Excerpt:
This was no one-off offense, like a solitary bank robbery. This was crime on a massive, industrial, assembly-line scale. There are, in this indictment:
- Six defendants
- Seven different federal crimes charged
- 27 counts in the indictment, involving
- 800 illegal migrants, resulting in
- $20 million in ill-gotten gains to be forfeited.
The scale is breathtaking, and the feds' ignorance of it for years is as if the Confederacy had not noticed Sherman's march to the sea.
The list (of assets that were seized) includes a 2010 Mercedes 400S sedan, three pieces of real estate, and 29 bank accounts held by the defendants and companies that they control. The total value of all this swag is noted as $20.7 million, but there are no statements about the size of each individual asset.
Mysteries Within the Indictment.
This leads to one of the multitudinous mysteries within the indictment. If Kosuri and his wife were securing funding from 800 illegal aliens (posing as H-1B workers) and if they had secured over $20 million in loot, why would they bother defrauding SBA of such small sums? In one case they applied for an SBA benefit, were rejected, applied again, were rejected again, and then apparently got what they wanted on the third attempt (once again, the indictment does not say so, but that sequence is implied.)
Similarly, they seemed to have only one, six-year-old vehicle worth seizing, the Mercedes, and Loudoun County (Va.) property appraisals show their home as being worth a bit over $800,000, fairly typical of the Ashburn area where they lived. Neither of these are signs of real affluence.
These indicators suggest one of two things: 1) they were engaged in a manic effort to squeeze as much money as possible out of the system, without spending too much of it; or 2) they were not managing their illicit house of cards very competently. I suspect some of both, but the indictment sheds no light on either.
This was written before the plea was made; the plea clarifies some of the details. In particular, it clarifies that JHARIA referred in the SBA fraud is Mrs. Smriti Jharia, and not her brother Mr. Vikrant Jharia.
The plea makes very interesting reading.
If you return what you've stolen the courts are often more lenient in sentencing. I imagine if you're committing a huge fraud then, if you're capable of thinking it through rationally, keeping the money until you're absolutely certain you've managed to get away with your crime is actually good idea.
Lovely.
"I know, we'll name our company American Eagle, Inc. No government official will dare touch something as patriotic as that. They worship that bird here, we should be safe".
But wonder if Citrix Systems' and American Eagle Outfitters clothing company laywers might want a word with them.
At least in case of Citrix it is the same market, so there are probably trademark issues involved? Pretty sure it shouldn't be legal to call your company Google LLC or Facebook Software Inc.
In India, it usually doesn't [0].
Note how he started and grew his business right in the depth of the recession, starting in 2008.
Not sure if those 800 workers have any recourse...
Now.
So, actually what gp is suggesting is not completely implausible.
In the war of terrorism, U.S-citizens caught fighting for Al-Qaeda/ISIS are tried for treason (potentially carrying a death penalty) while foreign fighters could be afforded the luxury of the Geneva Convention rights.
And yes, I am a naturalized US citizen.
Many of those picked up were fighting for the government of Afghanistan at the time so they should have been considered lawful combatants. The whole reason they were put in Guantanamo at the time was to keep them out of the reach of the Geneva convention.
I am hardly a support of islam or any of the cranks and criminals doing acts of terror - my opposition to what was and is still being done to Guantanamo is it totally counterproductive. It is the equivalent to a take no prisoners policy in war. If you want to bolster the enemy make surrender equal death and watch while every battle becomes a fight to the last man.