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Visa Fraud

This archive displays posts tagged as relevant to fraud in visa programs. You may also be interested in the following pages:

Page 4 of 4

In Their Own Words -- Parker

Posted  06/6/16

-- “The H-1B visa program is a powerful and positive tool for businesses and foreign workers alike when properly used. When employers abuse the program, however, the foreign workers become a captive stable of cheap labor, victimized to the company’s financial benefit.”

U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas. Click here for more.

December 7, 2015

The SEC announced a series of enforcement actions against lawyers across the country charged with offering EB-5 investments while not registered to act as brokers.  The SEC settled administrative proceedings against at least seven immigration law firms and/or attorneys, who agreed to cease and desist from acting as unregistered brokers, and collectively will pay over $700,000 in disgorgement, penalties, and prejudgment interest.  The SEC also filed a complaint in federal district court in Los Angeles alleging that immigration attorney Hui Feng and the Law Office of Feng & Associates not only acted as unregistered brokers by selling EB-5 investments to more than 100 investors, but also defrauded their clients by failing to disclose their receipt of commissions on the investments in breach of their fiduciary and legal duties. SEC

November 19, 2015

The SEC obtained a court order freezing the assets of Lin Zhong and her company EB5 Asset Manager LLC.  The SEC alleges that Zhong and EB5 raised at least $8.5 million for use in job-creating real estate development projects, but they diverted nearly $1 million to purchase a boat, a BMW, and a Mercedes among other improper personal uses of investor funds.  SEC

August 25, 2015

The SEC obtained court authorization to freeze the assets of Mr. Lobsang Fargey, a Bellevue, Washington man accused of defrauding Chinese investors seeking U.S. residency through the EB-5 program.  The SEC alleged that Dargey and his “Path America” companies raised at least $125 million for two Washington-based real estate projects, but Dargey diverted $14 million for unrelated real estate projects and $3 million for personal use.  The court’s order also restrains Dargey from soliciting additional investors and requires him to repatriate funds transferred to overseas bank accounts.  SEC

July 6, 2015

The SEC charged Bay Area oil and gas company, Luca International Group, and its CEO, Bingqing Yang, with running a $68 million Ponzi-like scheme and affinity fraud that targeted the Chinese-American community in California and investors in Asia, including some solicited as part of the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.  SEC

June 23, 2015

The SEC charged Ireeco LLC and Ireeco Limited with illegally brokering more than $79 million of investments by foreigners seeking U.S. residency through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.  The companies are charged with acting as unregistered brokers for more than 150 EB-5 investors.  SEC

September 3, 2014

The SEC charged Los Angeles-based immigration attorney Justin Moongyu Lee along with his wife Rebecca Taewon Lee and law firm partner Thomas Edward Kent with conducting an investment scheme to defraud foreign investors trying to come to the U.S. through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.  According to the SEC, they raised nearly $11.5 million from two dozen investors seeking to participate in the EB-5 program, which provides immigrants an opportunity to apply for U.S. residency by investing in a domestic project to create jobs for U.S. workers.  The Lees and Kent informed investors that they would be EB-5 eligible if they invested in an ethanol production plant they would build and operate in Ulysses, Kansas.  However, investors’ money was misappropriated for other uses and the plant was never built and the promised jobs never created.  SEC