Parth Nayi

Introduction

Parth Nayi, 29, of Woodridge, Illinois, was sentenced to two years in federal prison and fined $50,000 for organizing a scheme in which hundreds of armed robberies were staged at businesses across the country so that the purported victims could fraudulently apply for U-Visas — the immigration status reserved for foreign nationals who are victims of certain crimes. Nayi, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy to commit visa fraud, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Mary M. Rowland on Thursday, October 22, 2026, in a case the government says ran from 2022 to 2024 and stretched from Chicago and its suburbs — Lombard, Elmwood Park, St. Charles, Hickory Hills, River Grove, Lake Villa and South Holland — to coffee shops, restaurants, liquor stores and gas stations nationwide. “Defendant was the main organizer and at the center of almost every single one of the hundreds of staged robberies that were perpetrated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saqib Mohammad Hussain argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum.

Background Information

The mechanics of the scheme, as laid out in the government’s sentencing announcement, were elaborate enough to amount to a small industry. Nayi worked with others to recruit fake victims, pay off store owners for the use of their locations, coordinate and pay fake robbers, and coach the bogus victims through the plan. Thousands of individuals who posed as victims each paid Nayi between $5,000 and $30,000 to participate, buying their place in a manufactured crime scene that would generate the police paperwork the U-Visa process requires. During the staged robberies, the fake robbers brandished what appeared to be firearms, approached the purported victims and demanded money; afterwards, the “victims” submitted forms to local law enforcement to obtain certification that they were victims of a qualifying crime who had been helpful to the investigation, then used those certifications to file fraudulent U-Visa applications with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and sentenced. Nayi pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit visa fraud and was sentenced to two years in federal prison and a $50,000 fine by Judge Rowland on October 22, 2026.

The conduct Nayi admitted ran from 2022 to 2024: he organized and personally participated in hundreds of staged armed robberies, sitting — in the prosecutor’s sentencing-memo phrasing — at the center of nearly every one of them. The scheme corrupted the U-Visa program twice over: it fed USCIS thousands of applications predicated on crimes that never actually endangered anyone, and it put real-looking armed robberies into restaurants, gas stations and liquor stores where employees and real customers experienced them as genuine threats. Hussain’s sentencing memorandum framed the harm in programmatic terms: Nayi “significantly corrupted the federal U Visa program, designed to provide a benefit to a particularly vulnerable group — foreign nationals who are victims of serious crimes while visiting the United States.” The sentence was announced by Northern District of Illinois U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros together with FBI Chicago Special Agent in Charge Ryan Whalen and HSI Chicago Special Agent in Charge Matthew Scarpino — an FBI-and-HSI joint investigation ending in a sentence the government presented as the anchor of the case family.

Public Reaction and Consequences

Five other individuals have also been convicted as part of the federal investigation, the announcement notes — meaning Nayi’s sentence arrives as the organizing figure’s penalty atop a stack of convictions that already covered the scheme’s participants. The $50,000 fine, on top of the two-year term, is the court’s monetary judgment against the scheme’s organizer, though the release does not state a restitution figure against the defrauded immigration system. The fake victims who paid thousands of dollars each to Nayi’s operation occupy an awkward position the announcement leaves untouched: they committed fraud, but they were also, in the government’s framing, customers of the corruption that Nayi sold. No public statement from Nayi or his defense appears in the release; the record as announced is the plea, the sentencing argument, and Judge Rowland’s judgment.

Current Status

Nayi, 29, is beginning a two-year federal prison sentence imposed October 22, 2026, with a $50,000 fine, following his guilty plea to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. The plea and sentence are final. A visa-fraud conspiracy conviction also forecloses any future immigration benefit sought on truthful grounds, and the thousands of U-Visa applications the scheme generated remain the cleanup problem the government’s announcement leaves to USCIS. The other five convicted participants’ sentencings continue the case family through the federal docket.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Nayi’s two-decades-early entrance into the federal system — he is 29, and the scheme ran while he was in his mid-twenties — gives the sentence a long shadow: a felony conviction for conspiracy, two years of imprisonment, and a fine, arriving before his third decade ends. For the businesses whose owners were paid to lend their premises to fake robberies, and the police departments whose officers certified crimes that never happened, the case documents how thoroughly a visa program’s verification chain can be industrialized when someone builds a business around it. The government’s own closing framing is the measure of the fallout: a program built for genuine victims of serious crimes was, in Hussain’s words, significantly corrupted — by one organizer, hundreds of staged robberies, and thousands of paying customers.

Sources

• U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of Illinois, “Suburban Chicago Man Sentenced to Two Years in Federal Prison for Staging Robberies To Help Others Fraudulently Apply for Immigration Visas,” October 23, 2026 — source