Man Receives 21-Month Sentence in Staged U Visa Scheme

Sentence and admitted conduct

U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips sentenced Jose Luis Morales Salgado to 21 months in federal prison and ordered him to forfeit $61,200 for his role in a conspiracy involving staged robberies and fraudulent U visa petitions, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri.

Prosecutors said Salgado pleaded guilty to conspiracy to fraudulently obtain immigration visas. He admitted that people paid him thousands of dollars to arrange staged robberies that they planned to report as real crimes when seeking U nonimmigrant status.

Court documents described by the Justice Department identified 11 staged robberies involving 33 purported participants between December 29, 2021, and July 13, 2024. The department said 18 of those people submitted fraudulent U visa petitions. Those figures describe submitted petitions; the releases do not say the petitions were approved.

How the staged reports worked

Salgado admitted recruiting people to pose as armed robbers and directing the encounters, prosecutors said. Participants would report vehicle trouble before a masked person arrived with a firearm, struck them, took cash, and usually fired twice into their vehicle. DOJ said Salgado then instructed participants to give police false accounts intended to support the petitions.

How U status is decided

Form I-918 is the petition for U nonimmigrant status. USCIS instructions require a principal petitioner to submit Supplement B from an authorized certifying official. The certification addresses qualifying criminal activity and the victim's helpfulness to authorities, while USCIS decides the petition. USCIS also states that a person culpable for the qualifying criminal activity cannot be recognized as its victim. These rules do not establish the eligibility of any person connected to this prosecution.

Investigation and unanswered petition status

The Justice Department said Kansas City police initially connected 11 reported robberies through leads from the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network. Investigators concluded that the same firearm was probably used across the incidents and used city cameras and license-plate readers to identify vehicles.

An undercover federal agent and a law-enforcement source met with Salgado in January 2025, according to prosecutors. The agent arranged to pay $4,000 for a staged robbery and paid a $500 deposit. Authorities arrested Salgado at a later meeting on January 30, 2025.

The Kansas City Police Department, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and Homeland Security Investigations investigated the case. The Justice Department's releases do not state whether any of the 18 submitted petitions were approved or what action USCIS took on them.