(Image source from: hindustantimes.com)

NewYork:
An Indian American has been caught,and sentenced to be punished behind the bars, in the United States after being found guilty in cases of illegal wire and visa fraud, from which he got over USD 450,000 as back door false filling fees for H1B visas and green card credentials for employees from India

The crime suspect was identified as Ramesh Venkata Pothuru aged 44, ho was well recognized as a former Owner and operations officer of Virgo Inc and Isync Solutions.

Ramesh is sentenced to Prison for one year and one day in the jail, following the convictions of Visa and Wire fraud, according to the statement made by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officials.

The sentencing of crime will then be followed by a joint investigation by Homeland security Investigations(HSI), US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Document and Benifit Fraud Task Force (DBFTF).

Mr. Ramesh was identified collecting over $450,000 as illegal filling fees and other related expenses from more than 100 fraudulent visas and employer-sponsored green cards, in case of non immigrant workers from his native India.

The investigation reports disclosed that between the years 2010 and 2013, Ramesh has collected Hundreds and thousands of dollars as filling fees from the employees for which he was sponsoring under H1B non Immigrant worker Visa Program.

As per the Federal Regulations, they prohibit workers from tapping payments from H1B non-immigrant workers to manage the costs that are associated with filing fees, these fees are required by law to be accepted by the patron US employer.

With addition to the above requirement, most of the H1B non-immigrant employees were also the recipients of employer Sponsored Permanent Certification applications filed by Ramesh, with the Department of Labour.

“Typically the permanent labour certification filling also concerns the costs of many thousand dollars in addition to the filing fees, Ramesh has unlawfully collected both the charges from the employees.” said authorities.

Ramesh has directly collected all these unlawful fees and expenses from the employees, who got benifited by him by getting sponsored H1B visas and visas through the direct payments to his own personalized bank accounts.

By Lokesh