An H-1B employer who previously came under fire for alleged visa fraud is accused of defrauding employees.
BlazeTV and Texas Scorecard personality Sara Gonzales interviewed a former employee of Great American Technologies in Frisco, a company that has come under scrutiny for sponsoring dozens of H-1B workers. The H-1B visa is a temporary U.S. work permit that allows employers to hire foreign nationals for specialized jobs.
According to the former employee, owner Nagarjuna Reddy Sakam allegedly defrauded him, highlighting a six-month period when he received no payment while in his employment.
In the interview, the employee told Gonzales that he worked for a different consulting firm that sponsored his visa before working for Sakam. He was told that money would be collected to cover U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services and attorney fees, which he was promised would eventually be reimbursed. He said that this is a common practice to lock in employees.
At the time, the former employee said he did not know that such a practice was illegal.
Gonzales asked if people in India think this is common practice, to which the former employee replied that they do and that “as per my knowledge, each and every person who [is] coming from other countries are paying the money.”
After continually not being paid by the consulting firm which sponsored his visa, he finally transferred and began working for Sakam, who promised him timely payments.
Despite the promises, the former employee alleges that Sakam went long stretches without paying employees and often ignored their phone calls and text messages seeking payment.
Gonzales points out that Sakam even had two rounds of paycheck protection program loans that were later forgiven to the extent of $266,000, which she asserts were not being used to pay employees.
After Gonzales confronted Sakam about the alleged H-1B fraud, the former employee said Sakam told his employees that he was going to shut down the company.
When the former employee requested paystubs to look for a new job, Sakam allegedly refused, revoked his H-1B, and threatened to report him to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an investigation into several businesses for possible H-1B visa fraud. Paxton didn’t name the businesses, but his office said the investigations included “entities identified in videos that were widely circulated online.”
Gonzales began reporting on the abuses of the H-1B visa system just prior to Paxton’s announcement.
