Two From O.C. Firm Charged in Visa Scam
Two men operating a Fountain Valley immigration consulting firm have been charged with fraudulently obtaining visas for hundreds of immigrants who were promised jobs that didn’t exist, authorities said Friday.
Naveed Akhter, 41, of Huntington Beach and Nurrudin Shaikh, 46, of Norwalk were charged Friday in federal court in Santa Ana with filing false immigration visa petitions. If convicted, they could face up to five years in prison.
Prosecutors say the pair, operating under the name Reach USA, induced customers, mostly from India and Pakistan, to pay as much as $7,000 each for the filing of petitions from firms that were willing to hire them for construction and computer programming jobs in the U.S.
The problem, prosecutors said, was that the jobs and employers -- identified by names such as Renovationmax of Irvine, Renovationmax of Costa Mesa, Sapron of Newport Beach and Sapron of Tustin -- didn’t exist.
Prosecutors said Akhter and Shaikh filed hundreds of petitions containing false statements that had been sworn to under penalty of perjury.
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