NEW JERSEY: Nilesh Dasondi, founder of Cygate Software and Consulting was arrested June 17 and charged with conducting an immigration scam between January 2002 and June 2008 through his company in Edison, New Jersey.

Bail has been set at $800,000 for Dasondi, an Edison zoning board member, who ran and lost out in the Democratic Primary for Edison City Council last year. According to the New Jersey Courier News, Dasondi's bail was secured by equity in three properties Dasondi owns, including his primary residence.

He was also ordered to observe home confinement with electronic monitoring. Four bank accounts were seized, three of them in the name of Dasondi's company, Cygate, and one in the name of another company he controlled, authorities said.

"We believe those were the fruits of the crime," Michael Drewniak, spokesman of the US Attorney's office was quoted in the Courier News. According to court papers, Dasondi was charged with providing H-1B visas to six people by submitting fraudulent paperwork to the US government, claiming that they worked for his company, when in fact they did not.

He allegedly received lump-sum payments from the six people on a monthly basis, which was rolled back to them as paychecks after Dasondi kept a small profit for himself. Dasondi also agreed with the six people to petition USCIS for green cards on their behalf in exchange for fees of between $10,000 and $15,000 per card, authorities said.

The six people who allegedly received the fraudulent visas were arrested as well. Three of them were arrested on Long Island, one in Chicago, one in Arizona and one in New Jersey.