California Tech Executives Plead Guilty in Elaborate University-Linked H-1B Visa Fraud Conspiracy

The architecture of the deception relied on the intersection of Rajidi’s private enterprises and Mada’s high-ranking institutional authority. Court documents reveal that Rajidi operated two visa services firms, S-Team Software Inc and Uptrend Technologies LLC, which served as the primary vehicles for sponsoring foreign workers under the H-1B specialty occupation visa program. Simultaneously, Mada leveraged his position as Chief Information Officer at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) in Davis. While Mada’s supervisory role did not grant him the power to independently hire H-1B workers, he deliberately lent his name and official designation to the scheme to provide a veneer of institutional credibility to the fraudulent applications.

Between 2020 and 2023, the duo conspired to submit a series of H-1B petitions containing information material to the adjudication process managed by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Prosecutors established that Rajidi filed false claims asserting that the beneficiaries would be employed in specific roles at the University of California. However, investigations conducted by the Department of Justice confirmed that these positions were entirely non-existent, and the beneficiaries never contributed to any University of California projects. Once the visas were secured through these false representations, Rajidi and Mada marketed the foreign workers to other private clients for profit.

The impact of this criminal operation extended far beyond the immediate fraud, as the illicit petitions reduced the annual pool of H-1B visas available to legitimate applicants and granted the defendants an unfair competitive advantage over law-abiding firms. By systematically subverting federal immigration protocols, Rajidi and Mada not only compromised the integrity of the H-1B program but also engaged in a calculated exploitation of the U.S. labor market. This high-stakes conviction marks a decisive conclusion to a three-year conspiracy that traded the reputation of a premier educational institution for personal gain and corporate leverage.