By IANS
New York : Nine people of Indian origin were indicted in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for illegally smuggling in immigrants to the US, federal prosecutors have said.
A federal jury Friday said that over the past five years the defendants – eight Indian nationals and a naturalised US citizen – brought a dozen immigrants into the country using false passports and fabricated documents.
They allegedly charged thousands of dollars per person, hatching the conspiracy at meetings in bars and at doughnut shops in Chicago and Harrisburg. A video store in Mount Prospect, Illinois, was used to transfer passports and do money transactions.
Eight of the suspects were arrested Dec 5 in Chicago and Pennsylvania, while the ninth, Rajesh Katwa, 22, of the Chicago area, is still at large.
The indictment describes how the alleged ringleader Naresh Patel, 45-year-old naturalised US citizen, was heard outlining his plan to smuggle people from India, China and Egypt during a September 2006 meeting at an off-track betting parlour in York.
About five months later, six Indian nationals were moved through Thailand, Los Angeles and Philadelphia before ending up in a York motel, where a woman paid a $25,000 cash fee, the indictment said. A second group of six followed the same route to a motel in Harrisburg in August.
The defendants, if convicted, face possible maximum sentences of 15 years each.