U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ fraud detection efforts resulted in the guilty pleas of Sampath Rajidi, 51, and Sreedhar Mada, 51, to conspiracy to commit visa fraud, an April 23 press release from USCIS said. The guilty pleas were announed on April 17, by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California Eric Grant.
Rajidi and Mada are scheduled to be sentenced by U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley on July 30. Both face a maximum statutory penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
According to court documents, Rajidi operated two visa servicing companies, S-Team Software Inc. and Uptrend Technologies LLC. As part of the business models of S-Team and Uptrend, Rajidi petitioned for H1-B specialty occupation worker visas to obtain foreign workers for temporary placement with various companies. Mada was chief information officer of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources in Davis, California. Mada had supervisory authority but could not hire H1-B workers for his department without further authorization.
Between June 2020 and January 2023, Rajidi and Mada conspired to submit fraudulent H-1B visa petitions for numerous aliens. On those petitions, Rajidi falsely represented that these aliens would be working at the University of California. Mada lent his name and the credibility of his position to support the false assertion that they would work on projects for the University of California.
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In reality, both Rajidi and Mada knew that the positions listed on the petitions did not exist and the aliens did not work on projects at the University of California, the USCIS press release noted They submitted false information, knowing it would influence USCIS’ decision about granting these visas. After they successfully got H1-B visas for these aliens based on false employment information, they marketed these aliens as employees to other clients. As a result of their conspiracy, Rajidi and Mada gained an unfair advantage over other firms and reduced the pool of H-1B visas available to competing firms.
The U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, and the USCIS Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate are investigating this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Harman is prosecuting it.
The actual sentence will be determined at the discretion of the court after considering any applicable statutory factors and the federal Sentencing Guidelines, which take into account a number of variables.