(Image source from: news18.com)

47-year-old Indian National, Ravi Babu Kolla, residing in US has pleaded guilty to charges of running fake marriage racket and Visa fraud.

Ravi Babu, who lives in Florida's Panama city, helped illegal immigrants, mostly Indians, to get married to US citizens, and helping them stay in the country has been detained.

According to reports his co-conspirator Krystal Cloud, 40, was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for marriage and visa fraud conspiracy after pleaded guilty on December 28, 2018. After entering a fraudulent marriage of her own in October 2017, she helped bring in more US citizens to marry Indian nationals.

She directly helped in the recruitment of 10 US citizens from Panama city and rural Calhoun and Jackson Counties.

From February 2017 and August 2018, Kolla operated an immigration marriage fraud business in Bay County that recruited US citizens to marry Indian foreign nationals to gain immigration benefits, prosecutors said Thursday.

Investigation revealed that over 80 fraudulent marriages that were performed in Alabama as part of Ravi Babu Kolla's fake marriage scheme, the Department of Justice said.

Ravi Babu’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for May 22 at the US Courthouse in Tallahassee. He faces a maximum of five years in prison for conspiracy to commit marriage and visa frauds and a maximum of 20 years in prison for money laundering conspiracy

By Sai Kumar