International Employee Recruiter Sentenced to Two Years for Visa Fraud
U.S. District Judge Paul W. Grimm recently sentenced Milen Radomirski, a Bulgarian national residing in Germantown, Maryland, to two years in prison for visa fraud. Judge Grimm also ordered Radomirski to forfeit $100,000.
“American businesses are permitted to sponsor foreign workers to enter the United States lawfully under the H-2B visa program, but Milen Radomirski undermined that program by falsely vouching for hundreds of aliens who were not expected to comply with the terms of the visa,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein.
According to the USCIS announcement, from 2003 to August 2013, Mr. Radomirski worked for a pool service company in Maryland that provided lifeguards and pool maintenance in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. As part of his employment, Mr. Radomirski recruited international workers that his company could sponsor to work in the United States on H-2B visas and other short-term visas. Mr. Radomirski admitted that he fraudulently obtained more than 100 H-2B temporary worker visas. From 2006 through 2011, Mr. Radomirski’s company submitted applications for approximately 789 H-2B visas. His company certified to the U.S. Department of Labor that it had not sought or received payment from the workers to obtain the visas, and specified to USCIS the jobs in which the foreign nationals would be employed. Sponsored workers could not be employed by any other company. The company was required to notify DHS if any H-2B workers failed to report to work within five days after their specified start dates or if workers absconded or were terminated.
Mr. Radomirski admitted that he charged visa beneficiaries money in exchange for including them on his company’s petitions for H-2B visas. He knew that many of the visa beneficiaries would not work for his company at all, would only work at his company for a short period of time, or would work for other employers in addition to his company.
