Immigration Attorney Jessica Meng

A California businessman last week was sentenced to six months in prison for giving H-1B visa job offers that did not exist.

Srinivasa Chennupati, a native of Indian, 33, pled guilty in December to visa fraud. Chennupati admitted that starting on April 1, 2009, he submitted 11 foreign worker petitions to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that contained “counterfeit job offer letters” from the Gap Corporation, Wells Fargo Bank and Genentech. The jobs listed in the petitions were for computer systems analysts and software engineers that would be paid between $60,000 and $65,000.

Chennupati opened his business as a headhunter to match employers in the U.S. with potential employees in India who would receive H-1B visas. In 2008, the company legally filed 10 H-1B petitions. In 2009, the business filed for 19 additional H-1B visas, 11 of which were fraudulent, according to the court.