Four Charged in Work Visa Fraud Scheme
Monday, December 14th, 2009
By: Tom MacDonald
tmacdonald@whyy.org
The U.S. Attorney in Philadelphia is charing four people with running a work visa fraud scheme in the Philadelphia area.
The defendants – officials at a temp agency – are accused of using false names and non-existent jobs on applications for work visas. Assistant US Attorney Virginia Gibson says the company, International Personnel Resourses in West Chester, was engaged in a massive fraud scheme to manipulate the temporary work visa system.
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Gibson: They falsely inflated the number of visas needed by these employers so that they would have a bank of extra visas to pass around as they saw fit. They placed ads for non-existent employment in newspapers. They submitted false advertisements and false statements to state departments of labor.
The company allegedly used buses to ferry illegal workers who were in the United States back to Mexico where they picked up the fraudulent work visas and crossed back into the US legally.