Kishore Kumar Kavuru, Visa Fraud & Mail Fraud, California 2018

Kishore Kumar Kavuru, a 46-year-old resident of Sunnyvale, California, has been charged with visa fraud and mail fraud in a scheme to maintain a pool of foreign workers for his clients.

The indictment, handed down on October 18, 2018, and unsealed today, charges Kavuru with ten counts of visa fraud and ten counts of mail fraud.

According to the indictment, Kavuru held himself out as a staffing specialist for technology firms based in Santa Clara County and elsewhere seeking to fill temporary positions with foreign workers.

The indictment describes how Kavuru used his consulting companies, including Scopus Consulting Group, Inc., ITECH Analyst Corp, Infinity Methods Corp, and Orian Engineers Incorporated, to process and submit fraudulent applications for foreign workers to obtain permission to work in the United States under the H-1B visa program.

The H-1B Program allows an employer to hire a foreign worker for a specialty occupation in the United States on a temporary basis.

Under the H-1B visa program, a specialty occupation requires highly specialized knowledge in a certain field and a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent.

Kavuru allegedly submitted fraudulent documents to both the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security containing details of bogus work projects awaiting the foreign workers.

As part of the scheme, Kavuru required some prospective workers to pay thousands of dollars in cash before he would prepare and submit the visa applications, a violation of Department of Labor regulations.

Additionally, Kavuru required some workers to wait unpaid, sometimes for months, to be placed at an end-client’s workplace, which is also a violation of the Department of Labor’s regulations.

Kavuru has been charged with ten counts of visa fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1546(a), and ten counts of mail fraud, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1341.

The case is currently ongoing, and no sentence or outcome has been reported yet.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/south-bay-resident-charged-visa-fraud-and-mail-fraud