New York Couple Cops to H1B Visa Fraud, Forfeits $1M

Loreto Kudera, 45, and Hazel Kudera, 43, a married couple from New York, New York, are off the hook for prison — but not for crime. Each sentenced to two years of probation and slapped with a $25,000.00 fine, the duo admitted to running a sprawling H1B visa fraud scheme that exploited foreign nurses and gamed the U.S. immigration system for profit. Their cut? Over $1 million in illegal proceeds — cash they’ve already been forced to forfeit to the federal government.

Their scam, cooked up from 2016 and unraveled by federal investigators, centered on deception. Hazel Kudera owns multiple medical staffing agencies in New York that supply nurses to hospitals and nursing homes. She and her husband, Loreto Kudera — then a practicing lawyer at the Law Offices of Barry Silberzweig — conspired to file fake H1B visa petitions with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in St. Albans, Vermont. They claimed foreign nurses, mostly from the Philippines, would fill specialty occupations at prevailing wages. In reality, those nurses were funneled into low-wage LPN and RN roles in long-term care facilities — jobs that don’t qualify under the H1B program.

The H1B visa system is designed to bring in highly skilled workers for specialized roles — not general medical staff. The Kuderas knew that. They lied anyway. By falsifying job titles, duties, and salary levels, they submitted 100 or more fraudulent petitions, duping federal authorities and undercutting legitimate applicants. Each fraudulent filing brought in fees from both the nurses and the healthcare facilities desperate for staffing — cash the Kuderas pocketed as part of their illegal enterprise.

On June 9, 2016, the couple pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, opening the door to federal penalties and financial reckoning. The $1 million forfeiture was not voluntary — it was a court-ordered clawback of the dirty money they made by trafficking in fake visas and false promises. Their sentencing, delivered by Judge J. Garvan Murtha in Vermont, spared them prison time but branded them as convicted felons in a scheme that undermined a critical federal program.

The investigation was a multi-agency bloodhound operation. The U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, the Department of Labor’s Office of Inspector General, and Homeland Security Investigations in Boston worked in tandem to track the paper trail and expose the fraud. Special credit was given to the USCIS Security Fraud Division in St. Albans, Vermont — the very office targeted by the Kuderas’ deceit — for helping dismantle the operation from within.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Heather E. Ross led the prosecution through investigation and plea, while First Assistant U.S. Attorney Eugenia Cowles handled sentencing. Hazel Kudera was defended by Richard Willstatter of Green & Willstatter in White Plains; Loreto Kudera by Marc Fernich of New York, New York. Their names are now etched in federal court records — not as business owners or a legal professional, but as architects of a visa fraud enterprise that cheated the system, exploited vulnerable workers, and cashed in on deception.