H-1B Visa Fraud Exposed: Indian-American entrepreneurs admit submitting false petitions for foreign workers

An Indian American US entrepreneur has admitted to committing visa fraud in federal court. In November first week, Kishore Dattapuram, 55, of Santa Clara, pleaded guilty in federal court to visa fraud and conspiracy to commit visa fraud.

Dattapuram and two other defendants, Kumar Aswapathi, 55, of Austin, Tex., and Santosh Giri, 48, of San Jose, were each charged in an indictment filed Feb. 28, 2019, with one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and 10 counts of substantive visa fraud. Aswapathi pleaded guilty to all counts on October 19, 2020. Giri pleaded guilty to all counts on October 28, 2024.

Background

Dattapuram and Aswapathi owned and operated Nanosemantics, Inc., a staffing firm headquartered in San Jose that provided skilled employees to technology companies in the Bay Area. Under its agreements with the companies and the employees it placed, Nanosemantics received a commission for workers placed at client companies.

Giri worked closely with Nanosemantics and was also the owner of a separate business, LexGiri, a legal process outsourcing firm that served as a “remote-virtual corporate immigration specialist” for companies.

In connection with its staffing work, Nanosemantics regularly submitted H-1B petitions for foreign workers.

What is H-1B visa program

The H-1B visa program allows foreign workers to obtain temporary authorization to live and work for employers in the United States. In order to secure an H-1B visa, an employer or other sponsor must submit a Form I-129 petition to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

A petition and associated documentation must confirm the existence and duration of the job waiting for the worker, and describe key details including the wages associated with the position.

The H-1B Visa Fraud

In pleading guilty, Dattapuram admitted to working with Aswapathi and Giri to submit fraudulent H-1B applications that falsely represented that foreign workers had specific jobs waiting for them at designated end-client companies when in fact the jobs did not exist.

On multiple occasions, Dattapuram paid companies to be listed as end-clients for the foreign workers, even though he knew the workers would never work for those employers.

As defendants admitted, the goal of the scheme was to allow Nanosemantics to obtain visas for job candidates before securing jobs for them, thereby allowing Nanosemantics to place those workers with employers as soon as those jobs were available, rather than waiting for the visa application process to conclude, and giving Nanosemantics an unfair advantage over its competitors.