A Silver Spring employment company pleaded guilty to immigration fraud in a scheme to obtain green cards for illegal immigrants.
EBI Inc., which helped find U.S. jobs primarily for Korean and Chinese immigrants, admitted in federal court in Greenbelt that it submitted at least 25 falsified documents to the federal government to obtain visas for immigrant workers to work at U.S. companies.
As part of the agreement, the company will pay $800,000 in fines and forfeitures, prosecutors said.
The company charged the immigrants $30,000 to $50,000 for obtaining the visas, according to a plea agreement signed by company founder Charles Changham Yoo. The scheme lasted from at least 1999 to 2004.
Yoo could not be reached late Friday. The businesses closed offices in Maryland and Los Angeles in 2004, according to court documents.
EBI conspired to submit falsified visa applications to the federal government through an program that allows an employer to sponsor an alien for employment if the employer cannot find qualified U.S. workers.
Prosecutors said that EBI used the signatures and identifying information of former EBI clients who didn’t need the green cards because they had recently obtained permanent resident status or citizenship.
The former clients were not aware that their identities were being used.
EDI marketed itself as a free labor-recruiting service to poultry processing and textile companies that faced a high turnover rate. The business was known for its ability to help immigrants seeking to gain legal permanent residency in the U.S. quickly and efficiently, prosecutors said.
