Two Plead Guilty In H-1B Visa Fraud Affecting The University Of California

India-West News Desk

SACRAMENTO, CA – Two Dublin residents have admitted to orchestrating a sophisticated scheme that exploited the H-1B visa program by leveraging the prestige of the University of California. U.S. Attorney Eric Grant announced on April 17 that 51-year-olds Sampath Rajidi and Sreedhar Mada pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud in a federal court.

The fraudulent operation centered on Rajidi’s two visa servicing firms, S-Team Software Inc. and Uptrend Technologies LLC. According to court records, Rajidi used these entities to petition for H-1B Specialty Occupation visas intended for foreign workers. To ensure the success of these petitions, Rajidi entered into a conspiracy with Mada, who held a high-ranking position as the Chief Information Officer of the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources in Davis.

Between June 2020 and January 2023, the duo submitted numerous petitions falsely claiming that foreign workers would be employed in specific roles at the University of California. Mada used his official title and supervisory authority at UCANR to provide a veneer of legitimacy to these claims, despite lacking the actual authorization to hire H-1B workers for his department.

Federal investigators revealed that the positions described in the petitions were entirely fictitious. Rajidi and Mada were fully aware that the beneficiaries would never perform work for the University of California. Instead, once the visas were secured through these false pretenses, the defendants marketed the workers to other private clients for placement elsewhere.

This maneuver allowed the defendants to bypass the standard competitive landscape for H-1B visas. By submitting material falsehoods to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), they not only gained an unfair commercial advantage but also depleted the limited annual pool of visas available to legitimate American firms.

The sentencing will be on July 30, 2026. Both Rajidi and Mada face a maximum statutory penalty of five years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 for their roles in the conspiracy.