Sunnyvale man sentenced to 15 months

Kishore Kumar Kavuru involved in fraud scheme

A Sunnyvale man was sentenced on Monday to 15 months in prison for filing fraudulent H-1B visa applications for non-existent jobs to bring foreign workers illegally to Silicon Valley, according to officials.

Kishore Kumar Kavuru, 46, was sentenced on Monday after pleading to one count of visa fraud on May 24, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a Tuesday news release. According to a plea agreement, Kavuru was the CEO of four staffing companies that obtained H-1B visas, which allow companies to hire foreign workers temporarily, and placed the workers at tech firms.

Kavuru was responsible for filing visa applications for workers and submitting them to the U.S. government, according to authorities. He was indicted on 10 counts of mail fraud and 10 counts of visa fraud in 2018; prosecutors said he had schemed to bring in 600 foreign workers illegally to the U.S. over the last decade.

Kavuru said in the plea agreement that from 2009 through at least 2017, he submitted more than 100 H-1B applications that “falsely described H-1B positions and falsely stated that the H-1B workers were to be placed at those companies,” officials said. Kavuru

or one of the employees also signed the applications under penalty of perjury, according to the news release.

Kavuru said that he required the foreign workers to “pay him thousands of dollars in cash” in order to submit the applications and to “go unpaid for months” while he looked for actual H-1B jobs for them, officials said. Kavuru earned more than $1.5 million in proceeds and submitted over 100 fraudulent applications, according to a memo filed for sentencing.

In addition to the 15 months in prison, Kavuru must forfeit more than $533 million and will be under a three-year supervision period after being released from prison. Kavuru will begin serving his sentence on Feb. 10.