Parth Nayi, a suburban Chicago man, charged between $5,000 and $30,000 per client to stage armed robberies at real businesses — coffee shops, restaurants, liquor stores, gas stations — so immigrants could file police reports claiming they were crime victims and apply for U-visas granting them legal status in the United States.
The DOJ says he oversaw at least 17 of these productions. One of them went wrong when a fake robber accidentally shot a real store clerk in the abdomen, critically injuring him.
Nayi was sentenced to two years in federal prison and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine. Five co-conspirators were also convicted. According to the Department of Justice, the ring "organized and participated in hundreds of staged armed robberies" between 2022 and 2024, operating out of locations across Illinois — Lombard, Elmwood Park, St. Charles, Hickory Hills, River Grove, Lake Villa, South Holland. Roughly 100 individuals received fraudulent visas through the scheme.
The vehicle is the U-visa, created by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. The original idea was straightforward: if you're an immigrant who "has suffered substantial physical or mental abuse as a result of a crime," you get temporary legal status and a path to stay. The visa lasts four years. After that, you can apply for a green card. Three years later, citizenship. Your spouse, children, and siblings can follow through chain migration.
Nayi figured out that the system verifies whether you filed a police report — not whether the crime actually happened.
Illinois made it easier. As a sanctuary state, law enforcement there is required to sign the certification form for U-visa applicants regardless of whether the case has merit. The bureaucratic stamp that's supposed to confirm a real crime occurred became a rubber stamp that confirms a form was filled out.
The scale of the vulnerability goes well beyond one Chicago ring. The Center for Immigration Studies found that "two-thirds of U visa petitions it reviewed were based on alleged criminal victimizations that would not result in prosecution or were already closed cases." Two-thirds. Not edge cases. The majority.
And the pipeline is growing. Joe Biden created a new category in 2021 called "Bona Fide Determination" that lets U-visa applicants receive benefits before their petition is even fully processed. In 2021, 17,990 people received approvals under that category. By 2025, the number hit 103,196. A program designed for genuine crime victims scaled nearly six-fold in four years.
The United States currently offers more than 180 visa options. Somewhere in that maze, a category designed to protect trafficking victims became a product you could purchase from a guy in the Chicago suburbs for the price of a used car. The filing fee was a police report. The evidence was a performance. The store clerk who took a bullet in the abdomen during one of those performances wasn't part of the business plan.
As AMAC Newsline reported, Nayi's operation ran for two years across at least eight Illinois towns before anyone shut it down. A hundred fraudulent visas. Five convicted conspirators. One critically injured bystander.
The fine was $50,000. The going rate for a staged robbery was up to $30,000. Nayi oversaw seventeen of them.
