BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales has been on a tear in Texas, exposing alleged H-1B visa program fraud and collecting scalps along the way.
After flagging numerous potential fraudulent operations, prompting Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) to take legal action, Gonzales teamed up with U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito.
‘This was a total scam.’
Together, they paid a visit to Mohammad Abbas, a Dallas resident suspected of scamming foreigners with the promise of H-1B visa sponsorship and/or green cards.
“This right here is everything that’s wrong with H-1Bs,” Labor Department Inspector General D’Esposito told Gonzales outside the office door of Abbas’ Molabs Media.
“This is why fraud is taking away American jobs from American workers.”
D’Esposito implored individuals involved or victimized by the alleged scheme to get in touch with the Labor Department, noting that “whistleblowers are protected.”
Abbas clearly did not appreciate all the attention.
When Gonzales showed up at Abbas’ office with D’Esposito and a folder brimming with damning evidence earlier this month, the alleged fraudster’s door was covered and went unanswered.
“Mohammad, you can run but you can’t hide,” said Gonzales, “because all of the information that we have was quite literally handed over to the inspector general of the Department of Labor. I’m sure the investigators over there are going to have a field day with this.”
“The walls are closing in, Mohammad. Tick-tock,” added the BlazeTV host.
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The DOL’s Office of Inspector General is undertaking a massive crackdown on H-1B visa program abuse.
A spokesperson for the Department of Labor told Blaze News, “The Department of Labor OIG’s H-1B fraud investigation is active, expanding, and aggressive. We have issued subpoenas, executed search warrants, and are following the evidence wherever it leads.”
“We are ramping up resources and coordinating closely with acting Secretary [Keith] Sonderling and the White House Fraud Task Force to identify, expose, and dismantle fraudulent employers, brokers, and networks that exploit the H-1B system and steal American jobs,” continued the spokesperson. “Deportation authority belongs to DHS, not DOL. Our job is to build the cases. When we uncover fraud, we work with our federal partners to pursue every appropriate criminal, civil, and immigration consequence.”
Thanks to Gonzales’ investigation, the DOL has the scent of a potential fraud scheme in Dallas.
Gonzales and her team received multiple complaints about Abbas from separate purported victims claiming to have shelled out small fortunes in hopes of securing legal status to live and work in the United States.
“These people were charged thousands of dollars for this,” said Gonzales. “One of the victims even said he paid $60,000, but the sponsorship never came through.”
While stiffing desperate people is bad enough, Gonzales emphasized that it is “illegal to take payment from people to sponsor them for visas.”
Not only is it unlawful for a would-be employee to pay outright for a sponsorship, as D’Esposito told Gonzales, it is illegal for the employer to offset H-1B costs by lowering the prospective employee’s salary or demanding reimbursement.
Gonzales noted that Abbas owns multiple companies — including Molabs Media, which has lost the right to transact business in the Lone Star State, and HiTech Network Solutions — which appear to cite the same Dallas corporate suite as their headquarters.
According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ H-1B Employer Data Hub, these organizations sponsored H-1B visas in recent years. The organizations, which appear to have recently scrubbed their team webpages, also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in PPP loans that were later forgiven, according to ProPublica’s “Tracking PPP” database.
After trying unsuccessfully multiple times early in her investigation to reach Abbas at his home or office, Gonzales finally got ahold of him by phone and asked him about the alleged scheme.
Abbas — who allegedly runs some funds through a bank account in Pakistan and who, according to his LinkedIn, was educated in Bangladesh — denied that he was selling green cards and visas, claiming instead that he sells “Indian concerts.”
This claim doesn’t appear to hold water.
Gonzales identified a woman named Rachel Samuel — who purports on LinkedIn to be the business development manager for Abbas’ Molabs Media LLC and has in recent years sought potential H-1B candidates for various roles — as the apparent recruiter and point of contact for individuals allegedly trying to buy green cards or visas from Abbas.
In one alleged text exchange between one of Abbas’ alleged victims and Samuel, who launched her own visa-sponsoring tech company whose right to do business in Texas has been terminated, Samuel appears to state, “Basically we can do 5 payments Once a month without getting flagged,” adding, “Anything over 30K will be flagged by IRS.”
One of the purported victims alleged to Gonzales that he touched base with Abbas’ crew, discussed different payment options, and finally agreed to pay an initial sum of $2,500 for his sponsorship, which he claims to have deposited into Abbas’ local bank account.
After hearing nothing back from Abbas’ outfit, the victim alleged that they notified him that they had put his name in the H-1B lottery — even though he allegedly paid on the understanding that they would endorse him under a different visa program — and were now expecting him to pay another $4,000 to close the deal.
“I mean, this was a total scam,” said the victim.
Blaze News reached out to Mohammad Abbas and Rachel Samuel’s attorney for comment but did not receive a response.
Gonzales told Blaze News, “Let this serve as a warning to all the people committing H-1B fraud. I’m not stopping until you’ve all gone back home or are locked up.”
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Department of labor, H1b visa, Sara gonzales, Visa, Fraud, Texas, Ken paxton, Politics
