Judge Mary M. Rowland sentenced Parth Nayi to two years and a $50,000 fine for a staged-robbery visa scheme.

Thursday's order is the sentence on the guilty plea. The plea is the conviction for conspiracy to commit visa fraud. The Louisiana and Tennessee locations are overt acts in the indictment, not separate convictions announced at sentencing. The office said five other people have been convicted in the investigation. The Daily Herald called them out-of-state defendants.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois said Friday, Oct. 23, 2026, that U.S. District Judge Mary M. Rowland sentenced Parth Nayi, 29, of Woodridge, Illinois, to two years in federal prison and fined him $50,000. The office said he pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. CBS Chicago reported the office announced the sentence on Friday and that the prison term and fine were imposed Thursday. The Daily Herald also reported Thursday's sentence, the same fine, and Judge Rowland. Thursday was Oct. 22.

The office said that from 2022 to 2024 Nayi organized and participated in hundreds of staged armed robberies at coffee shops, restaurants, liquor stores and gas stations throughout the country, including in Chicago and the suburbs of Lombard, Elmwood Park, St. Charles, Hickory Hills, River Grove, Lake Villa and South Holland. It said he worked with others to recruit people to pose as victims, pay off store owners to use their locations, coordinate and pay people to act as robbers, and coach the purported victims through the plan. It said thousands of those people each paid him $5,000 to $30,000 so they could later apply for nonimmigrant U visas, which are set aside for foreign nationals who are victims of certain crimes and are helpful to law enforcement. It said that during the staged robberies, people acting as robbers brandished what appeared to be firearms and demanded money, and that the purported victims then sought local police certifications and submitted fraudulent U-visa applications to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The Friday announcement does not name Louisiana or Tennessee. The indictment the same office posted does. It lists a staged robbery on or about May 13, 2023, at a Subway restaurant in Rayne, Louisiana, one on or about May 30, 2023, at the Trolley Rock Truck Stop in Belvidere, Tennessee, and one on or about July 13, 2023, at Bucktown Food & Liquor in Chicago. Those entries are overt acts in the charging document. The count Judge Rowland sentenced is the conspiracy he admitted.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Saqib Mohammad Hussain wrote in the government's sentencing memorandum that Nayi "was the main organizer and at the center of almost every single one of the hundreds of staged robberies that were perpetrated," and that he "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 office said. The office said five other individuals have also been convicted in the investigation. The Daily Herald called them five out-of-state defendants. The office said the sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Andrew S. Boutros, FBI Chicago Special Agent in Charge Ryan Whalen, and Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent in Charge Matthew Scarpino.

Thursday's two-year term and the $50,000 fine are the sentence on the guilty plea to conspiracy to commit visa fraud. The plea is the conviction on that count. All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.