An Indian CEO arrested for H-1B Visa fraud

An Indian CEO Pradyumna Kumar Samal has been arrested for H-1B Visa fraud. He is a native of Odisha state in India and aged 49 years. Samal was arrested on 28 August upon arrival at the Washington Seattle-Tacoma Airport. This has been revealed by the press release of the Department of Justice in the US.

Samal allegedly ran a multi-year H-1B Visa fraud in his tenure as the CEO of 2 IT firms beginning from 2010. These 2 firms were based at Redmond in Washington. The 1st firm headed by him was Divensi an IT services firm. The 2nd firm that he led was Azimetry a geospatial data processing firm.

Pradyumna Kumar Samal has been charged with H-1B Visa fraud on around 200 counts, as quoted by the QZ. He has been accused of utilizing a ‘bench & switch’ modus operandi. This was to misuse overseas workers, defraud the US Government and compete illegally in the market, as per the DOJ.

Department of Justice in the US said that Samal forged fake letters and work statements. This is to obtain the visas for overseas nationals under the category of specialty occupation, added the DOJ.

Samal’s firms would obtain approval from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services based on false documents. It would then bench them leaving unpaid till these could be actually placed at the site of the client.

Around 200 workers have been victimized by the scam so far. These had to even make forced payments of partially refundable security deposits to the firms. This was up to 5,000$ for the visa filings.

Y-Axis Immigration Expert Usha Rajesh said that we do not deal with fraudulent documents. Y-Axis has in place checks and audits to avoid the same. We never accept the case if the documents are forged, added Usha Rajesh.

Y-Axis offers a wide range of Visa and Immigration products as well as services for aspiring overseas students including Work Visa for USA, Study Visa for USA, and Business Visa for USA.

If you are looking to Study, Work, Visit, Invest or Migrate to the US, talk to Y-Axis, the World’s No.1 Immigration & Visa Company.

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