A suburban Chicago man has been sentenced to two years in federal prison for orchestrating hundreds of staged armed robberies designed to help foreign nationals fraudulently obtain US immigration benefits. The elaborate scheme unraveled after a participant accidentally shot and critically injured a store employee during one of the fake crimes.
Parth Nayi, 29, of Woodridge, Illinois, pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. In addition to his prison sentence, he was ordered to pay a $50,000 fine. Five other individuals were also convicted in connection with the operation.
According to the Department of Justice, Nayi coordinated the fraudulent robberies between 2022 and 2024, exploiting a federal immigration program intended to protect foreign nationals who become victims of certain serious crimes.
The U-Visa program allows eligible crime victims to seek immigration protections if they have suffered qualifying abuse and assist law enforcement in investigating or prosecuting criminal activity.
Nayi’s operation recruited individuals seeking U-Visas and arranged for them to participate in fabricated robberies at cooperating businesses. Participants posing as victims paid between $5,000 and $30,000 for the opportunity to generate police reports that could support their immigration applications.
Business owners were compensated for allowing their establishments to serve as locations for the staged incidents, while additional recruits played the roles of armed robbers.
The fake victims would enter a participating store shortly before the supposed criminals arrived. The robbers would then threaten the participants, sometimes physically striking them to make the encounters appear authentic. Some carried actual firearms.
Following the incidents, the purported victims reported the robberies to police and sought documentation establishing that they had been subjected to qualifying crimes. That paperwork was subsequently used to support fraudulent U-Visa applications.
The dangerous nature of the operation became apparent during an incident at Bucktown Food & Liquor, located at 1950 North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago.
According to CWB Chicago, a member of the robbery crew accidentally discharged a firearm during a staged holdup, striking a 26-year-old store clerk in the abdomen and leaving the employee critically injured.
Federal prosecutors described Nayi as the central figure behind the extensive fraud operation, emphasizing the damage inflicted on an immigration program created to assist genuine victims of serious crimes.
“Defendant was the main organizer and at the center of almost every single one of the hundreds of staged robberies that were perpetrated,” Assistant US Attorney Saqib Mohammad Hussain said.
Hussain added that Nayi had “significantly corrupted the federal U Visa program,” which was established to protect vulnerable foreign nationals victimized by serious criminal activity in the United States.
