A Manchester man who obtained 45 visas for technology workers by pretending to have lined up jobs for them in California has been sentenced to three years of probation and a $40,000 fine.
Rohit Saksena, 42, of Manchester was sentenced Tuesday for filing false applications for H-1B visas for technical workers.
The U.S. attorney’s office said Saksena supported his applications with “bogus independent contractor agreements between a California company and Saks IT Group and with sham work orders that purported to show that the foreign worker would provide professional services for the California company.”
No such agreement actually existed, but Assistant United States Attorney Mark Zuckerman, who prosecuted the case, said Saksena did find software and other technical jobs for the people who were brought into the U.S. under the visas at “appropriate salaries,” just not with the company that he listed in the applications.
According to court documents, Saksena is the president and chief executive officer of Saks IT Group of Manchester. It places employees with companies to provide professional technology services using the H-1B visa program, which lets American businesses temporarily employ foreign workers with specialized expertise when qualified U.S. workers cannot be found.
From around March 2014 to December 2015, according to prosecutors, Saksena filed 45 fraudulent visa applications with United State Citizenship and Immigration Services, falsely claiming that Saks IT Group was hiring foreign workers to provide professional services to a company in Cupertino, Calif. The California company had not entered into a contract with Saks IT Group and had no jobs available for the foreign workers.
Zuckerman said Saksena found appropriate jobs for the people who came into U.S., which is the main reason that no jail time was requested.
“The H-1B visa program exists to help us employers find qualified workers for technical jobs … only after they show that there are no U.S. workers available to fill that position. There’s a review process for the company … to demonstrate they looked for a qualified U.S. candidate,” Zuckerman said.
The companies that ended up with the workers via Saksena had not necessarily gone through that process.
“Although the process itself was corrupted, there was no economic harm visited on anybody. No U.S. companies were defrauded,” Zuckerman said. He called the fine a “significant” deterrent.
“There was programmatic harm that is not appropriately addressed by a prison sentence.”
Many of the fraudulent applications were denied once Saksena’s deception came to light, according to reports.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
