Overview

• A Western District of Louisiana grand jury returned a 62-count indictment on July 16 charging five men—including three active or former small-town police chiefs and a businessman—with conspiracy, visa fraud, bribery, mail fraud and money laundering.
• Federal prosecutors say the scheme ran from December 2015 through July 15, 2025, in which immigrants paid facilitators thousands of dollars to be listed as victims of armed robberies in fabricated police reports supporting U-Visa applications.
• The indictment alleges that Chandrakant Patel paid a Rapides Parish sheriff’s deputy $5,000 on February 18, 2025, to influence the issuance of a fraudulent report aiding the fraud network.
• If convicted, each defendant faces up to five years for conspiracy, up to ten years per count for visa fraud, up to twenty years per count for mail fraud and fines of up to $250,000 per count, while Patel also risks ten years on the bribery charge and forfeiture of assets.
• The case is part of Operation Take Back America and is being led by Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation to target immigration-related corruption and vulnerabilities in the U-Visa certification process.