In one scheme, three Indian-origin men ran a staffing firm called Nanosemantics that submitted petitions for jobs that didn't exist.

In another, recruiter Kandi Srinivasa Reddy formed 13 shell companies and filed over 3,000 registrations for just 288 workers, charging desperate Indians thousands of dollars to become "employees" of fake firms with the promise of American jobs.

But the scam didn't just defraud Indians. It also exploited Americans. To satisfy legal requirements, these shell companies had to demonstrate "good faith" efforts to hire U.S. workers first. That meant posting ads, contacting and interviewing Americans, and documenting rejections with plausible explanations.

This is why so many Americans report being aggressively contacted by Indian recruiters about jobs they never hear back from. Unwittingly, they're providing the paper trail that enables visa fraud while the jobs are reserved for pre-selected foreign workers.

Anyone who has searched for a job online has probably encountered these recruiters demanding résumés, cover letters, and personal details without providing clear information about the job or benefits. In time, you learn to skip over postings with Indian-sounding names.

Indians dominate the H-1B visa program. In fiscal year 2023, 73 percent of approved H-1B workers were born in India, and between October 2022 and September 2023, Indian nationals received 72.3 percent of all visas issued.

Between April and September 2024, out of 130,000 H-1B visas granted, about 20 percent went to Indian-origin companies, with Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services leading.

Nearly 400,000 applications were approved that year, two-thirds renewals and one-third new. USCIS, however, raised concerns about fraud in the registration system: for FY 2024, there were more multiple registrations (408,891) than single ones (350,103), the first time this had ever happened.

After reforms were introduced, registrations dropped to 343,981 in FY 2026, a 26.9 percent decline compared with the previous year, suggesting that fraud prevention measures are taking effect.

Job seekers in the United States have long reported troubling patterns with Indian recruiters. Many describe being contacted by firms like Indotronix or Tanisha Systems, only to find that "nine out of ten" job requirements sent to them had nothing to do with their actual skills.