Indian IT Staffing Company Operator Abhijit Prasad Sentenced to 3-years in Prison for H-1B Visa Fraud & Aggravated Identity Theft
December 18, 2019 - Tracy, CA Indian IT Staffing Company operator Abhijit Prasad (52) was sentenced to 36-months in prison for H-1B visa fraud and aggravated identity theft today by U.S. District Judge in the Northern District of California.
Abhijit Prasad was indicted by a grand jury on December 23, 2016 and subsequently convicted of 19 counts of H-1B visa fraud and two counts of aggravated identity theft today by a federal grand jury on August 5, 2019.
According to the evidence presented at the trial in San Francisco:
Prasad filed 19 petitions for H-1B nonimmigrant visas containing false statements, made under penalty of perjury, as to purported work projects to be performed at locations in California, including Cisco Systems. The evidence at trial showed that Cisco had no expectation that the foreign workers who were the beneficiaries of the visa petitions would actually work at Cisco on an existing work project. The evidence at trial further showed that the defendant knowingly submitted forged Cisco documents to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services in support of his claims that the beneficiaries would work at Cisco.Besides the prison term, the court ordered Abhijit Prasad to forfeit $1,193,440.87.
..Prasad fraudulently used the digital signature of a Cisco employee, who was not authorized to sign Cisco employment documents, to create a document that would leave the impression that two of the H-1B workers had an existing work project at Cisco. Prasad obtained two of the H-1B visas using this fraudulent document that purports to be a fully executed Cisco contract.
Abhijit Prasad who is in federal custody, will begin serving his prison term immediately.