Businesswoman Gets Jail Term in U.S. For Visa Fraud

An Indian American businesswoman in San Jose, California, was sentenced to 13 months in prison for committing visa fraud. Sridevi Aiyaswamy, 50, pleaded guilty in mid-July to three counts of visa fraud. She was the owner of a Silicon Valley tech consulting business.

Aiyaswamy admitted that between April 2010 and June 2013 she made multiple false statements and submitted more than 25 fraud documents to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to obtain H-1B non-immigrant classifications for skilled foreign workers, the office of U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of California Brian J. Stretch said in a statement.

Aiyaswamy falsely represented I-129 petitions that the foreign workers would be working at an information technology and networking company in San Jose. She also submitted fake statements of work with forged signatures of managers to back up the I-129. She knew that the documents stating that the workers will be employed at Cisco Systems Inc. were false and that the company had not offered employment to those individuals.

She had said that the individuals will be employed as “network engineer,” “systems analyst” and “programmer analyst.” The individuals were working for Aiyaswamy at Strataserv, her IT consulting and contracting outfit in San Jose, California. The prosecutors argued that this gave Aiyaswamy a steady supply of low-cost and highly skilled tech workers.

On Dec. 3, 2015, she was indicted for 34 counts of visa fraud by a federal grand jury. However, she made a plea agreement, and pleaded guilty to three of the counts of visa fraud.

Apart from the prison term, U.S. District Judge Lucy H. Koh sentenced Aiyaswamy to a $10,000 fine and a three-year period of supervised release.

This is the latest case of a Silicon Valley company committing visa fraud. Jayavel Murugan, the CEO of staffing agency Dynasoft Synergy, had forged letters from Silicon Valley bosses to bring in low cost foreign workers to America. The individuals were placed in companies other than those from whom letters of employment were submitted.