CHICAGO - Six people are facing fraud charges for allegedly staging armed robberies in and around Chicago so they could apply for immigration visas, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court Friday.
The pair also allegedly committed similar scams in the suburbs of Lombard, Elmwood Park, St. Charles, Hickory Hills, River Grove, Lake Villa and South Holland, and at restaurants in Louisiana and Tennessee, prosecutors said.
During the staged robberies, people acting as robbers approached their fake victims with what appeared to be firearms, and demanded their money and personal belongings, the indictment said.
After the robberies, the purported victims would then file police reports certifying they were victims of a crime, which they then used to submit fraudulent applications to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for U nonimmigrant status. The U-visa is reserved for victims of certain qualifying crimes who have suffered mental or physical abuse and agree to assist law enforcement with the investigation, prosecutors said.
The indictment alleges Bhikhabhai Patel, 51, of Elizabethtown, Ky., Nilesh Patel, 32, of Jackson, Tenn., Ravinaben Patel, 23, of Racine, Wis., and Rajnikumar Patel, 32, of Jacksonville, Fla., made arrangements with Nayi to be "victims" of the staged robberies so they could submit U-visa applications. Prosecutors said people paid Nayi thousands of dollars to participate in the scam.
All six people named in the indictment are charged with conspiracy to commit visa fraud, punishable by five years in federal prison. Ravinaben Patel was also charged with one count of making a false statement on a visa application, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
First, Texas has already held its primaries way back in March. Unlike in 2022, Cuellar was unopposed in the Democratic primary this time around. He is therefore firmly entrenched as the party’s nominee unless he voluntarily bows out.
At a Rose Garden event this week, President Joe Biden bragged that “Thanks to my Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re building a network of 500,000 charging stations all across America.”
This is about as believable as the story of his uncle’s cannibalistic demise.
The truth is that Biden’s five-year, $7.5 billion effort to jump-start the development of electric vehicle charging stations is doing the opposite. The money has so far produced only eight new charging stations in two years. The overall growth rate in EV charging stations has slowed since he signed that bill. And earlier this month, Tesla gutted its EV charger efforts, dealing the entire scheme a huge blow.
In other words, this is shaping up to be a massive waste of taxpayer money.
The slow rollout of the Biden-approved EV stations is in part due to cumbersome rules and regulations required to access the money. That’s no surprise.
But it’s actually having a broader negative impact, slowing the growth of EV stations overall.
In the two years before Biden signed that infrastructure bill, the number of EV charging stations grew by roughly 20,000, according to data compiled by the Department of Energy. In the two years since, just 16,000 stations went online, even as EV sales accelerated. The result is that the ratio of charging stations to EVs is about half what it was in 2021. The administration says not to worry, because the buildout will soon take off. We aren’t holding our breath.
But even if the stations do start to roll out, these numbers don’t account for the large number of charging ports that aren’t working at any given time because of communication failures, power outages, software bugs, or other problems with the complicated tech.
A survey by J.D. Power found that almost 21% of drivers using public charging stations reported malfunctions. And when a Wall Street Journal reporter went around to 30 fast-charging stations in the Los Angeles area, she encountered problems at more than 40% of them.
But it’s actually having a broader negative impact, slowing the growth of EV stations overall.
In the two years before Biden signed that infrastructure bill, the number of EV charging stations grew by roughly 20,000, according to data compiled by the Department of Energy. In the two years since, just 16,000 stations went online, even as EV sales accelerated. The result is that the ratio of charging stations to EVs is about half what it was in 2021. The administration says not to worry, because the buildout will soon take off. We aren’t holding our breath.
But even if the stations do start to roll out, these numbers don’t account for the large number of charging ports that aren’t working at any given time because of communication failures, power outages, software bugs, or other problems with the complicated tech.
A survey by J.D. Power found that almost 21% of drivers using public charging stations reported malfunctions. And when a Wall Street Journal reporter went around to 30 fast-charging stations in the Los Angeles area, she encountered problems at more than 40% of them.
Even the new ones Biden is spending $7.5 billion to install, which are supposed to meet 95% reliability standards, don’t work as advertised.
A medical examiner has concluded that the injuries Paul Kessler sustained during an altercation with a pro-Hamas protester last year are consistent with a bullhorn strike, despite the alleged assailant claiming he did not cause the 69-year-old pro-Israel protester’s fall and subsequent death.Paul Kessler was holding an Israeli flag at a California gas station in November when Moorpark College professor Loay Alnaji allegedly hit him in the head with a megaphone. Kessler fell to the ground and suffered a skull fracture. He was brought to the hospital, where he died from blunt-force injuries seven hours after the attack.
Alnaji was arrested one week after the November 5 incident and charged with involuntary manslaughter. However, Alnaji and his defenders maintained that Alnaji and other pro-Hamas protesters were demonstrating peacefully and that Kessler was the aggressor in the incident, in which he merely slipped and fell to the ground, hitting his head.
The ex-diversity program manager for Facebook and Nike who stole more than $5 million from the mega companies to fund her “luxury lifestyle” was sentenced Monday to five years behind bars — and ordered to pay back the hefty sum.
Barbara Furlow-Smiles, 38, set up fake business deals, invoices and events — including a Juneteenth celebration — to line her own pockets, the Justice Department said.
“Furlow-Smiles shamelessly violated her position of trust as a DEI executive at Facebook to steal millions from the company utilizing a scheme involving fraudulent vendors, fake invoices, and cash kickbacks,” US Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan said in a statement.
“After being terminated from Facebook, she brazenly continued the fraud as a DEI leader at Nike, where she stole another six-figure sum from their diversity program.”
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