H-1B visa: South Bay executives must be re-charged with visa fraud, judges rule
Two South Bay executives who temporarily escaped prosecution over alleged H-1B visa fraud are back in the hot seat again, after an appeals court reversed a lower-court ruling that tossed out their indictment. The criminal charges against Namrata Patnaik of Saratoga and Kartiki Parekh of Santa Clara must be reinstated, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Tuesday. The pair were charged in 2022 with allegedly submitting, from 2011 through April 2017, fraudulent applications for the H-1B, a highly sought-after visa in Silicon Valley, intended for workers with specialized skills. Patnaik also was accused of money laundering purported fraud proceeds. Federal prosecutors claimed the two falsely stated in 85 visa applications that prospective H-1B holders would work on-site on internal projects at their San Jose computer chip business, PerfectVIPs. Patnaik and Parekh instead contracted the workers out to client companies, prosecutors alleged. In 2023, a judge in San Jose U.S. District Court threw out the charges, pointing to a 2020 ruling in another district court that said the visa-issuing agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), cannot ask