CEO Of Odia Origin Arrested In US On Visa Fraud Charges

New York: An Indian citizen, who was the CEO of two IT companies in the US, has been arrested in connection with a visa-fraud scheme involving forged documents to get H1B visas for over 200 foreign workers.

According to a report published in PTI, Pradyumna Kumar Samal, 49, was taken into custody as he arrived from an international flight at Seattle Airport.

The criminal complaint describing the visa-fraud scheme was filed in April 2018, soon after Samal fled the United States while the investigation was on. He remained out of the country until this week when he was arrested by law enforcement agencies, reported in PTI.

The criminal complaint describes how two companies incorporated by Samal in 2010 and 2011 in Washington State engaged in a scheme referred to as the “bench-and-switch” scheme, to exploit foreign-national workers and defraud the US Government.

According to the investigation that began in 2015, Samal served as the Chief Executive Officer of ‘Divensi’ and ‘Azimetry’ in Bellevue, near Seattle.

Both companies were in the business of providing IT workers, such as Software Development Engineers, to major corporate clients.

The complaint alleges that Samal submitted and directed his employees to submit forged applications to the United States Government, making it appear as if two corporate clients had already agreed to use several foreign-national employees named in the applications. In reality, neither client had agreed to do so.

The forged documents included forged letters and fraudulent statements of work, which appeared as if they had been signed by senior executives of the two clients. After the US Citizenship and Immigration Services approved the false work visa applications, Samal’s companies benched the foreign nationals, leaving them unpaid unless they were able to place them.

Nearly 200 workers may have been brought under the false applications. The employees were forced to pay Samal’s companies a partially-refundable “security deposit” of US$ 5,000 for the visa filings, regardless of whether they were provided them a job.

Visa fraud is punishable by up to ten years in prison and a US$ 250,000 fine in the US.