Web Desk

ISLAMABAD: Fox News presenter Kayleigh McEnany posted on X on June 6 that an Indian institution reportedly sold more than &ldquo;36,000 fake degrees&rdquo; to applicants seeking US work visas. The disclosure has prompted renewed scrutiny of credential fraud in India that affects the H-1B program, a work visa that allows American companies to hire skilled foreign workers. According to McEnany&#39;s post, the US Department of Labor has reportedly processed nearly 7 million H-1B visa holders since 2015, with over 70% originating from India. A major investigative report by Bloomberg in July 2024 revealed the scope of the deception. Bloomberg obtained unreleased H-1B petition records from 2020 through 2023 through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, exposing systematic manipulation by Indian IT staffing firms. The investigation found that staffing companies submitted thousands of duplicate applications for the same individuals through shell companies to significantly increase their odds of winning the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (D Visa) lottery. Bloomberg estimated that roughly 15,500 visas (about one in six awarded in a single year) were obtained through this fraudulent scheme. In one instance, a single staffing firm operator used a dozen separate companies to enter the same applicant up to 15 times. The credential-forgery infrastructure supporting this scheme came into public view in December 2025, when police in Kerala, a southern Indian state, arrested 11 suspects and seized nearly 100,000 counterfeit university certificates, according to local news outlets, including Mathrubhumi and Malayala Manorama. The mastermind of the operation, identified as Dhaneesh (alias &quot;Dany&quot;), coordinated document forgery across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Karnataka. Major national investigations found that forged certificates were sold for approximately $790 to $1,580 each. Mahvash Siddiqui, a US consular officer who reviewed about 51,000 visa applications at the American consulate in Chennai between 2005 and 2007, detailed the fraud mechanism during a Center for Immigration Studies podcast interview. Siddiqui stated that up to 90% of applications from Indian nationals contained fraudulent documents or involved unqualified applicants. In the Indian state of Hyderabad, a major technology hub, Siddiqui explained that visa consultancy shops produced counterfeit degrees, fake transcripts, and forged bank statements on an industrial scale. Applicants submitted Microsoft IT certifications instead of the required computer science degrees to circumvent the requirements. Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and Cognizant (India&#39;s largest technology staffing companies) employed workers in the US with fabricated credentials, according to statements from a fraud task force cited by Siddiqui. Indian supervisors at these companies extracted monthly payments of $2,000 to $4,000 from employees earning $12,000 annually to retain their jobs. Job interviews were conducted by qualified proxies rather than by actual applicants, allowing fraudulently hired workers to pass screening. US Department of Justice records show that IT staffing executives at S-Team Software pleaded guilty to submitting fraudulent visa petitions and fabricating job offers and institutional ties to secure approvals. According to Bloomberg, IT staffing firms intentionally paid lower salaries than mainstream American technology companies. Reports from Business Standard, an Indian financial newspaper, detailed how this fraud displaced qualified domestic job candidates. According to Department of Labor data cited by McEnany in a video published on the June 6 post, 83% of H-1B visa holders obtained junior or entry-level positions. The H-1B program officially targets high-skilled positions. A 15-member fraud task force of US consular officers filed an official dissent cable to the State Department, documenting widespread fraud affecting 80% to 90% of H-1B applicants from India, according to Siddiqui. The unit was characterized as a &quot;rogue operation&quot; by consular leadership, citing political pressure from Indian officials demanding increased visa approvals. The Texas Attorney General launched investigations into dozens of companies suspected of maintaining &quot;ghost offices&quot;: fake business locations used to sponsor foreign visas without actual operations. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement flagged 10,000 foreign students linked to shell employer companies under the Optional Practical Training work program, which allows international graduates to work in the United States after completing university degrees. In response, US Citizenship and Immigration Services restructured its H-1B visa lottery system to adopt &quot;beneficiary-centric&quot; selection, allowing each individual exactly one entry regardless of the number of employer registrations. Official USCIS data shows that eligible registrations dropped from 470,342 in fiscal year 2025 to 343,981 in fiscal year 2026, a 26.9% reduction. The average number of registrations per individual fell to 1.01, eliminating duplicate entries. The visa fraud has sent ripples across the world. Australia tightened skilled worker visa protocols, warning that permanent residency can be revoked if applications used forged credentials, according to the country&rsquo;s immigration authorities. Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom have similarly activated credential verification audits, according to immigration tracking reports.

India

US investigations expose systematic credential forgery and employment fraud by major Indian tech consultancies.

How Indian tech companies orchestrate massive H-1B visa fraud in US

ISLAMABAD: Ten Indian nationals were indicted last week on charges of paying an organizer to stage armed robberies at convenience stores so they could falsely claim to be crime victims on United States immigration applications, according to the US Attorney&#39;s Office for the District of Massachusetts. The fee to participate, federal prosecutors say, was $20,000. The &quot;robber&quot; would brandish an apparent firearm, take cash from the register, and flee. The clerk (a supposed victim) would wait five minutes as instructed, then call police. The surveillance cameras were deliberately positioned to capture it all. Nobody was ever in real danger. The entire encounter was choreographed. The target was a &ldquo;U visa&rdquo;, a humanitarian benefit created by US Congress in 2000 for undocumented crime victims who cooperate with law enforcement. A successful application offers deportation protection, work authorization, and a pathway to permanent residency. According to the US prosecutors, the defendants arranged to be &quot;robbed&quot; solely to fraudulently claim that status. The Boston case is, in the broader telling, a footnote. A pattern across states Federal court records and US Justice Department filings describe a fraud pattern, centered on the U visa, stretching across multiple states and involving levels of institutional corruption that go far beyond staged robberies. In Mississippi, according to the US Attorney&#39;s Office for the Southern District, an organizer named Sachin Girishkumar Patel never required anyone to fake a robbery. His operation retained a licensed attorney and a sitting Jackson Police Department officer. The officer wrote fictitious police reports. The attorney converted them into official law enforcement certifications and submitted them to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on behalf of paying clients. 19 people were indicted while 12 pleaded guilty. It went further in Louisiana. According to USCIS, an organizer named Chandrakant Patel maintained a bribery scheme for nearly a decade involving four law enforcement executives, among them three sitting police chiefs. The law enforcers produced fraudulent robbery reports on demand. The federal indictment ran to 62 counts. Rambhai Patel, at the center of the Boston case, was the low-tech version of the same enterprise. He was convicted in May 2025 with the court ordering forfeiture of $850,000 in proceeds. The ten defendants indicted last week are accused of being his clients. Why the &lsquo;U Visa&rsquo; The program&#39;s appeal to fraud networks is not accidental. It is partly a function of the program&#39;s own design. Congress capped U visa admissions at 10,000 per year. Demand long ago outpaced that ceiling, producing a backlog stretching several years, according to peer-reviewed immigration law research. But some applicants, it seems, did not wait in silence. Anyone who files a facially valid petition receives an Employment Authorization Document and protection from deportation while the case is pending, regardless of whether it is ever approved. The waiting period is what organized networks sell. For an undocumented worker already established in the United States, the $20,000 investment can be recouped quickly through above-board employment. The verification system has not kept pace with its exploitation. A 2022 audit by the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIC) found that USCIS adjudicators rely almost entirely on paper law enforcement certifications, with no secure electronic link to the thousands of local agencies authorized to sign them. In a reviewed sample of 591 U visa petitions, 66% were marked &quot;completed&quot; by the certifying official at submission. This means law enforcement no longer required ongoing cooperation from the applicant, thereby eliminating the continued contact that might otherwise expose a fraudulent claim over time, according to the OIG report. The real victims There is a particular damage embedded in the mechanics of U visa fraud that extends beyond the immigration system itself. The program it exploits was built for people with nowhere else to turn: domestic violence survivors, trafficking victims, exploited workers. Many do not come forward precisely because they fear the same immigration apparatus that fraud networks have learned to game. When organized schemes flood USCIS with manufactured claims, the resulting backlogs can stretch wait times to a decade or more, according to immigration legal researchers. The political scrutiny that follows invariably targets the program as a whole. This in turn threatens protections for the genuine victims the statute was written to protect. The ten defendants indicted in Boston are presumed innocent. But the program they are accused of manipulating will keep running, replete with a growing backlog, relying on paper certifications, and waiting for a verification system that, as of the US government&#39;s last audit, does not yet exist.

A United States passport and an Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) card sit atop India Rupee banknotes. (AFP)

A Boston indictment exposes a fraud industry built on staged crimes, bribed police chiefs, and a humanitarian visa program that organized criminal networks have quietly turned into a commodity.

Articles tagged with "INDIAN VISA FRAUd"

How Indian tech companies orchestrate massive H-1B visa fraud in US

Ten Indian nationals indicted for faking armed robberies to obtain US visas

How Indian tech companies orchestrate massive H-1B visa fraud in US