NRI Woman Accused Of ‘Enslaving’ Indian

An Indian-American woman, who is accused of keeping an Indian immigrant as a slave in her mansion here, has told a US court that she had no role in employing the maid. Annie George, 40, told jurors that her late husband made every important decision during the time she allegedly forced her ex-employee Valsamma Mathai to work as an illegal servant. 
    
Federal prosecutors say Annie’s ex-servant Mathai, 49, from Kerala worked illegally for 17 to 18 hour shifts with no time off and no sick leave in three homes for the Georges, the last being the 30,000-square-feet Llenroc mansion in Rexford, where she slept in a closet. 
    
The testimony about alleged domestic abuse could be key to Annie’s defence as it could lead jurors to conclude she had no role in deciding to employ the servant. 
    
Annie faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted in the US district court of harbouring an illegal alien for financial gain. Annie also testified she treated her former worker like “family” — and kept her from living in squalor in India. Prosecutors say Mathai’s visa, issued in 1998, allowed her to work for her previous employer in Manhattan — not Annie’s family, for whom she ended up working for fiveand-a-half years, Timesunion.com reported. 
    
Annie, who moved to US in 2001, repeatedly broke into tears when testifying about her late husband, Mathai Kolath George, who was killed along with the couple’s eldest of six children, George Kolath, in a private plane crash in 2009. Annie said the death of her husband crushed her emotionally and financially; he owned six motels, all of which are now closed or bankrupt. She said she constantly deals with creditors and nonstop pressure from in-laws. 
    
Under further questioning from her attorney, Mark Sacco, Annie’s voice shook as she reluctantly revealed the abuse from the man she wed. 
    
However, assistant US attorney Rick Bellisssaid it was an attempt to elicit sympathy from the jury. 

Indian firm indicted for H1B visa misuse 
An Indian-American company based in Texas has been indicted by federal authorities on charges of fraud in the H-1B visa category and using it to create a low-cost workforce in the US. The multi-count  indictment filed last month against top officials of the Dibon Solutions of Texas — Atul Nanda, Jiten ‘Jay’ Nanda, Siva Sugavanam, Vivek Sharma, Rohit Mehra and Mohammad Khan — alleges that the company paid H-1B visa-holding employees only when there was work. According to the 15-page indictment filed last month, Nanda brothers — the owners of the company — along with others conspired to fraud the H-1B system. The indictment alleges that Dibon hired foreign workers on H-1B visas and instead of paying them, used them to work for a third company and gave them the salary only when they worked for the third company.