Orlando, FL – A Romanian man gets 2 years in federal prison for trying to ship foreign workers into Daytona Beach to work hotel jobs that didn’t exist.
US District Judge Paul G. Byron sentenced Bogdan Dragos on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty on June 12th to filing a false petition to obtain visas for foreign workers.
The United States Department of Justice says it all happened in 2010 when Dragos filed a petition with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services while operating an employment agency in Daytona Beach.
According to court documents, Dragos asked USCIS for 392 visas, claiming that he had contracts with 12 Daytona Beach area hotels to give them temporary workers from the Philippines.
DOJ officials say it was soon after USCIS approved the petition that a US Embassy worker in Manila called the hotels and discovered that the contracts didn’t exist.
By that point, a “large” number of Filipinos had already applied for those visas to the United States, according to DOJ spokesman William Daniels.
Members of Homeland Security and the Diplomatic Security Service helped DOJ prosecute the case.
Copyright 2015 Southern Stone Communications.