A Washington D.C. immigration lawyer pleaded guilty this week 164 counts of immigration fraud, money laundering and conspiracy after filing more than 200 fraudulent visa applications, a scam that made him at least $2 million over a seven-year period.

Mohamed Alamgir was jailed immediately after his guilty plea, and could face several years in prison and be forced to forfeit $2 million in assets.  Alamgir’s crime involved manipulating the process in which an employer can apply to the Labor Department for a certification that will aid a prospective employee in obtaining a visa.

According to legal papers, prosecutors said Alamgir would pay employers to file false applications for people who would never work for them.  He would also forge an employer’s signature on the application and file applications with fictitious information for nonexistent people.  Alamgir would often deposit receipts in the bank accounts of associates, rather than his own in order to conceal the flow of money to and from him, according to prosecutors.

One of the accounts used served as a red flag for federal investigators and the case began as a money-laundering investigation.  Simultaneously, Labor Department investigators were noticing an unusual jump in the amount of applications filed by certain employers.  Late last summer, investigators from the FBI, Internal Revenue Service and the Labor Department inspector general’s office began questioning Alamgir.