 TRIAL CONTINUES IN IMMIGRANT INVESTOR VISA CASE
Trial continued this week in the case of two men charged with visa fraud and income tax evasion related to their business that provided immigrant investor visa programs. The two men, James O'Connor and James Geisler, ran the Interbank Group, which provided investment plans for foreign nationals seeking to immigrate to the US through the investor visa program. The program offers green cards to people who invest $ 1 million in a qualifying business ($ 500,000 in certain areas). O’Connor and Geisler are accused of setting up fraudulent investments.
This week an IRS agent testified about income tax violations by the two defendants. According to the agent, O’Connor failed to report $ 450,000 in income from 1992 to 1996. Geisler was said to have failed to report about $ 400,000.
The foreign nationals who invested through Interbank were unaware that that law was being violated. Nonetheless, they are suffering because of it. Clients were told that they only had to invest $ 100,000. The balance of the required amount came from money wired from an offshore bank. An INS agent testified this week that 43 of the visas granted to Interbank clients either have been revoked are in the process of revocation. The agent added that the INS was in the process of revoking visas granted to clients of similar investment companies.
Things looked even worse for the two defendants after the testimony of a witness they called. Dale Schwartz, an immigration lawyer who prepared some of the visa applications submitted by Interbank, testified that he was shocked when he learned that O’Connor and Geisler were using client funds for personal purposes. According to Schwartz, the basic idea behind the plan, of using loans to satisfy the investment requirement, was totally legal and quite common. However, Schwartz testified that such loans would need to be disclosed to the INS, which did not happen in many Interbank applications.
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