SACRAMENTO, Calif. —U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ fraud detection efforts resulted in the guilty pleas of Sampath Rajidi, 51, and Sreedhar Mada, 51, to conspiracy to commit visa fraud, U.S. Attorney Eric Grant announced last week.
According to court documents, Rajidi operated two visa servicing companies, S-Team Software Inc. and Uptrend Technologies LLC. As part of the business models of S-Team and Uptrend, Rajidi petitioned for H1-B specialty occupation worker visas to obtain foreign workers for temporary placement with various companies. Mada was chief information officer of University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources in Davis, California. Mada had supervisory authority but could not hire H1-B workers for his department without further authorization.
Between June 2020 and January 2023, Rajidi and Mada conspired to submit fraudulent H-1B visa petitions for…
PAYROLL & HR CONTROLS (PREVENTING “GHOST” SCHEMES)
Payroll fraud is often the hardest to detect because it “looks” like a normal business expense.
- Segregation of Duties (SoD): The person who adds new employees to the system must not be the same person who approves the monthly pay run.
- Mandatory Vacation Policy: Require all financial and HR staff to take 5–10 consecutive days of leave annually. Fraud often surfaces when the perpetrator isn’t there to “hide” the trail.
- Ghost Employee Audit: Perform a quarterly “Headcount Reconciliation” where managers must physically verify every name on their payroll list exists.
- Self-Pay Blocking: Ensure the payroll software has a hard-coded block preventing administrators from editing their own salary or bank details.