Grand Jury Indicts North Carolina Company for Visa Fraud Scheme

A grand jury recently indicted International Labor Management Corporation (ILMC) of North Carolina on 41 counts relating to visa fraud. ILMC was in the business of preparing and submitting petitions on behalf of client companies to the U.S. government for temporary workers under the H-2B visa program and the H-2A agricultural visa program.

Among other things, the indictment alleges that the ILMC owners falsely petitioned for and obtained extra H-2B visas beyond the actual needs of their client employers to create pools of extra visas. This pool allowed employers who could not otherwise obtain H-2B visas due to the cap to use them to bring workers into the United States under the pretense that they were going to work for the employer for whom the H-2B visas had been approved, and by allowing ILMC to obtain H-2B visas before the cap was reached using inaccurate start dates, thereby denying such H-2B visas to other employers or competing agents. The ILMC owners then used those workers who entered the United States under false pretenses for other employers or otherwise to benefit themselves. In some cases, they agreed with a client to create fictitious companies for this purpose. An ILMC owner also instructed at least one client employer to obtain temporary workers by falsely claiming that such workers were needed for H-2A agricultural work, to avoid the H-2B cap.