Two men pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States by recruiting, hiring, and housing illegal immigrants for their company.
Asher Sharvit, 29, and Oren Sharvit, 28, pleaded guilty on Thursday and both are facing at least a year in prison. Another man who was indicted with them, Rona Zhfani, did not plead guilty.
According to Asher and Oren's plea agreements, the trio operated multiple businesses in Maryland and elsewhere as part of Unlimited, which included Unlimited Treasures. Inc. Unlimited 13 Corp., Deja Vu Cosmetics, and BH Distribution Group LLC.
It says while operating these businesses they knowingly agreed to recruit, hire, employ, house, and transport immigrants who did not have lawful authority to work in the U.S. Their plea agreements continue to say they admitted to doing this from 2008 to 2017, and they were motivated by commercial gain.
How the operation worked is they would recruit aliens overseas to travel to the states on visitor visas to work, hire them without lawful authority, and encourage and assist some of them make materially false statements in visa applications, visa extensions and other documents required by the immigration laws. They then paid the immigrants on a commission basis, with no deductions for taxes, social security, and other required employee deductions.
Both Oren and Asher admitted they did this for more than 100 immigrants and they were involved in the transportation or harboring of a minor.
Asher further admitted to obstructed justice after shredding more than 25 boxes of Unlimited documents in February 2017.
The court has set a trial date for Rona Zhfani in March 2019.
