In July 2023, a gunman walked into a Chicago liquor store, and during the robbery his gun went off. A store employee was critically wounded.
Federal prosecutors say the robbery was staged. The gun wasn't fake.
That robbery was one of hundreds organized by Parth Nayi, a 29-year-old from suburban Woodridge, Illinois. From 2022 to 2024, prosecutors say, Nayi ran a business staging fake armed robberies so his customers could pose as crime victims and qualify for a special immigration visa.
Here's how it worked.
An immigrant who wanted to stay in the country paid Nayi between $5,000 and $30,000. Nayi then paid a store owner, at a coffee shop, restaurant, liquor store, or gas station, to let him use the business. He hired someone to play the robber and coached his customer to play the victim, usually as a store clerk or customer.
The fake robber came in, flashed what looked like a gun, and grabbed cash. Sometimes, prosecutors say, the robbers hit the "victims" to make it look real. At Lake Villa Liquors in January 2023, the clerk was struck in the head and taken to a hospital.
Then the "victim" went to the police, filed a report, and got the department to certify that they'd been the victim of a crime. With that certification in hand, they applied for a U visa.
Congress created the U visa in 2000 to help police. The idea was that immigrants who were victims of serious crimes would be more willing to come forward and help investigators if they didn't have to fear deportation. In exchange, they could get legal status.
Only 10,000 U visas can be issued each year. The cap doesn't keep anyone away, though, because the real prize comes long before the visa does. Once an application is found to be legitimate on its face, the applicant can get a four-year work permit and protection from deportation while they wait. And the wait is long. The backlog now tops 461,000 cases, and the newest applicants could wait 20 years or more for a final decision.
In other words, a staged robbery can buy an illegal immigrant years of legal work and freedom from deportation.
Prosecutors say thousands of people paid Nayi, and that he took in at least $2 million in cash, by a conservative estimate. The staged robberies stretched across Chicago and its suburbs, including Lombard, Elmwood Park, St. Charles, Hickory Hills, River Grove, Lake Villa, and South Holland, and reached as far as a Subway in Louisiana and a truck stop in Tennessee.
Prosecutors said Nayi was "at the center of almost every single one of the hundreds of staged robberies." They said his fake victims made up a "substantial percentage" of all U visa applicants during those years. In their words, he "significantly corrupted the federal U Visa program."
Last Thursday, a federal judge sentenced him to just two years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
As light as that sounds, it was more than anyone else asked for. Federal sentencing guidelines called for six to 12 months. Prosecutors asked for 12, partly because Nayi cooperated and testified against a co-defendant. His lawyer asked for probation and called the scheme "nonviolent." U.S. District Judge Mary Rowland gave him double what prosecutors requested.
His co-defendants got off lighter still. Five others have been convicted. One man who posed as a robbery victim at a Chicago Dunkin' got a year of probation. Two others got time served. One more, convicted by a jury in July, will be sentenced in November.
Rep. Chris Smith, the New Jersey Republican who wrote the anti-trafficking law that created the U visa, called this kind of abuse "especially egregious."
Nayi came to the U.S. from India as a teenager. Because of his conviction, he can now be deported.