A University of California executive from the East Bay is facing prison after pleading guilty to obtaining more than two dozen H-1B visas through false claims that the recipients would get UC jobs.

Sreedhar Mada, 51, served as chief information officer for the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources department at UC Davis, court filings said.

His co-conspirator Sampath Rajidi, also from the East Bay and 51, agreed in March to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. Both men, from Dublin, California, entered guilty pleas to the charge last week, in federal court in Sacramento.

UC spokeswoman Heather Hansen said that after the university system was contacted regarding a criminal investigation, it launched an internal review and cooperated with federal authorities.

“The University’s review determined that the employee violated University policy, and the University took appropriate corrective action,” Hansen said. “Mr. Mada is not currently an employee at the University of California.”

Hansen added that the matter concerned “the actions of a single individual acting outside the scope of University policy and authority,” and no institutional misconduct was found or suggested.

The two men, from mid-2020 through January 2023, used a pair of software companies led by Rajidi to submit 27 applications for H-1B visas, one of them purportedly for a job in the UC Office of the President, the rest for the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources department where Mada worked, the federal charging document for the men said.

The jobs did not exist. Mada and Rajidi “took advantage of” Mada’s executive position in the UC system to “report the University of California as the purported end-client for foreign workers,” the document said.

The H-1B program, intended for workers with specialized skills and heavily used by Silicon Valley’s technology industry, has become increasingly controversial amid the immigration crackdown in President Donald Trump’s second term. Long attacked over alleged cases of H-1B visa holders replacing U.S. workers, the program has divided Trump supporters.

Administration figures from the tech industry — which relies on the H-1B visa to recruit top talent and to obtain lower-paid foreign workers via staffing companies — have squared off against anti-immigration hardliners. Trump has spoken favorably of the visa, but also imposed a $100,000 fee on new H-1Bs for workers outside the U.S. at the time of application. Trump’s administration plans to impose a new rule requiring higher wages for workers using the visa.

In September, Silicon Valley giants Google, Meta and Apple were among companies targeted in a letter by Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Republican Sen. Chuch Grassley of Iowa, that highlighted bipartisan anger over firms’ use of the visa at a time of massive layoffs in the tech industry.

Mada and Rajidi filled the role of a staffing company, the charging document said. Once they obtained H-1B visas, they placed the visa holders at client companies, the document said.

“Because only a limited number of H-1B visas are issued each year, (the men’s) actions decreased the available pool of H-1B visas and harmed competing firms and businesses,” the document said.

Mada and Rajidi each face a maximum five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. Rajidi’s plea agreement noted that prosecutors were planning to seek a sentence of six to 16 months. A judge will decide on the sentence.

Rajidi agreed to forfeit to the government cryptocurrency in the form of 13 Ethereum and .37 Bitcoin, each worth about $30,000. Rajidi also agreed to pay a monetary judgment of $287,000.

It was not immediately clear whether Mada agreed to the same forfeiture.

Rajidi and Mada are scheduled to be sentenced July 30 in Sacramento U.S. District Court.

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