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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)

India

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 "U visa"

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

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