University of Northern New Jersey Case (2016)
In one sentence
CPT was the core of the sting. Recruiters and staffing firms were prosecuted; students' status was first terminated wholesale and later restored through a class-action settlement. The settlement draws the clearest line found so far: documents the school created are not charged to the student, but statements the student signed are.
Facts
In 2013 HSI set up the University of Northern New Jersey (UNNJ) in Cranford, New Jersey. The school had no classes, and its "officials" were undercover agents. Recruiters brought foreign students in; the students paid "tuition" and received full-time CPT work authorization without attending class.
The criminal complaint records what an undercover agent posing as a school official told the head of a staffing firm:
we can fake the system and just continue to give them CPT because no one's gonna check
On April 5, 2016, more than twenty brokers, recruiters, and employers were charged. At the same time, HSI worked with SEVP to terminate the student status of the 1,076 foreign nationals associated with UNNJ.
Outcomes by party
| Party | Finding | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Issuer: school | The government itself | Undercover agents played the school officials |
| Employers (staffing firms) | Held responsible | Tejesh Kodali, CEO of Promatrix and Blue Techs, and Harpreet Sachdeva and Sanjeev Sukhija of Right OPT each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud (18 U.S.C. 371). Kodali admitted he intended to place the students with businesses across the U.S. as IT consultants for commissions |
| Companies where students worked | Not involved | No such company was pursued in any primary source |
| SEVP / ICE | Enforcer | Terminated the student status of 1,076 people, with administrative arrest and removal proceedings where applicable |
| USCIS | Deceived party, then later reviewer | DOJ said most H-1B petitions were not approved because USCIS had been told of the undercover operation. When some students applied for reinstatement, USCIS denied them, finding their claims to have attended online classes were willful misrepresentations |
| Students | Terminated wholesale, later restored by settlement | See below |
Fang v. ICE (Third Circuit, 2019)
Students sued ICE over the terminations. The district court dismissed, holding the termination was not final agency action; the Third Circuit reversed: the termination was final agency action, and students did not have to seek reinstatement before suing. In its background section the court also observed:
Purported "fraudulent enrollment" in an institution is not a statutorily authorized reason for terminating a student's F-1 visa status.
On whether the students committed fraud, the government's position shifted: at oral argument it conceded the students were unknowing victims, then wrote to the court afterward withdrawing that, saying some students "in all likelihood" knew their recruiters were committing visa fraud. The court therefore declined to decide:
Given the Government's vacillation on the issue, we take no position on whether the students fraudulently enrolled in UNNJ.
The settlement (Dong v. Johnson, 2022)
After remand the parties settled. The key terms:
- The April 2016 termination letters are treated as rescinded.
- UNNJ enrollment alone is not sufficient grounds to find a student inadmissible for fraud or willful misrepresentation (INA 212(a)(6)(C)(i)).
- The following can still be used against a student: written statements the student signed claiming to have attended classes; material misrepresentations about employment history at any time; and evidence that a small number of students took part in broker conduct.
The first item expressly excludes documents the school produced:
written statements signed by a class member which assert that the class member attended classes at UNNJ (but not including any misrepresentations contained in documents allegedly created by UNNJ such as transcripts or attendance sheets)
The agreement states that it is not an admission by any party and has no precedential value.
What this case shows
- The employers prosecuted in this CPT case were staffing firms that took part in the fraud and profited from placing students — not companies that simply had students working for them.
- Documents the school created and statements the student made are counted separately. What a student controls is what they themselves sign.
- This line comes from a settlement, not a ruling, and has no precedential value.