Last Monday, eight Indians were arrested from Detroit, Florida and Virginia in a nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation.
A recent arrest of the eight Indians for recruiting several hundred students mostly from India to stay illegally in the US by enrolling in a fake university, have pleaded “not guilty” before a federal court in Michigan.
Phanideep Karnati, 35, one of the eight arrested Indians who is on a H-1B visa and lives in Louisville, Kentucky was released on an unsecured bond of
$10,000 USD on Monday. He was allowed to be released by magistrate Judge R Steven Whalen of the federal court in Detroit.
Niraj Warikoo of the Detroit free press reported that Karnati’s wife, two sons aged 2 and 9, were in the courtroom when he, along with others were produced in the court. “She held her two-year-old son as the attorney described how the family feels,” the newspaper report said.
Seven others – Barath Kakireddy, Suresh Kandala, Prem Rampeesa, Santosh Sama, Avinash Thakkallapally, Aswanth Nune, and Naveen Prathipati – agreed to continue their detention before a judge in the Eastern District of Michigan, where they were produced along with Mr Karnati days after their arrest.
Eight Indians were arrested on allegations of being recruiters for the fraud university and all of them hail from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
They were arrested last Monday from Detroit, Florida and Virginia in a nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation. The ICE has also detained some 130 students, out of which 129 were Indians.
John W Brusstar, attorney for Karnati told PTI over phone from Michigan that all of them pleaded “not guilty”.
Brusstar accused the federal government of tricking people by carrying out such a sting operation. He told PTI in response to a question, “It was all choreographed.”
Except for Mr Karnati, none of the seven Indians, arrested on criminal charges for recruiting foreign students to enroll in a fake university to illegally stay in the US, had hired an attorney on Monday. All of them are in late 20s or 30s.
Mr Karnati, an information technology engineer on H-1B visa, came to the US some 10 years ago and was released on a bail because of his good track record.
If convicted he and seven others face imprisonment of up to five years.
According to the 16-page indictment, these eight Indians conspired to fraudulently facilitate hundreds of foreign nationals in illegally remaining and working in the US by actively recruiting them to enroll into a metro Detroit private university Framington University, from February 2017 to January 201.
No knowledge of the conspirators, Framington University was operated by special agents of the Homeland Security Investigations (HIS) as part of an undercover operation, ICE said in a statement.
As part of the scheme, the defendants and recruiters assisted foreign citizen students in fraudulently obtaining immigration documents from the school and facilitated the creation of false student records, including transcripts, for the purpose of deceiving immigration authorities.
The illegal documents obtained as a result of the conspirators” actions were based on false claims, false statements and fraud since the purported foreign students had no intention of attending school, nor attended a single class, and were not bona fide students.
The ICE said that all participants in the scheme knew that the school had no instructors or actual classes.
The defendants intended to help shield and hide their customers/”students” from United States immigration authorities for money and collectively profited in excess of a quarter of a million dollars as a result of their scheme.
The university was being used by foreign citizens as a “pay to stay” scheme which allowed these individuals to stay in the US as a result of foreign citizens falsely asserting that they were enrolled as full-time students in an approved educational program and that they were making normal progress toward completion of the course of study, as per the indictment.
The indictment stated, “Each of the foreign citizen who enrolled and made tuition payments to the university knew that they would not attend accrual classes, earn credits or make progress towards an actual degree in a particular field of study – a pay to stay scheme.”
The charges reported also said, “Rather their intent was to fraudulently maintain their student visa status and to obtain work authorisation under the CPT program.”
It claims that each student knew that the university”s program was not approved by the Department of Homeland Security and was illegal and that discretion should be used when discussing the programme with others.
The ICE had arrested some 21 people on similar charges for a fake University of Northern New Jersey in 2016.
Source: PTI
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