Wouldn't that get caught at the airport? I mean, when someone arrives and says they have an H1B visa, USCIS does check, right?

Now, given everything else here I wouldn't be surprised if there was fraud involved in getting the H1B visas issued, but that's separate from the question of whether people who think they have H1B visas actually have H1B visas.

Yes, you definitely couldn't tell the immigration agent that you have an H1B and they'll let you through without checking.

However, if the founders are willing to forge money transfer receipts, and given all the other hijinks in the post, I wouldn't put it beyond them to bring over engineers on a tourist visa, instruct them to not tell immigration they're coming to work for some BS reason, and then mislead them by telling them that their H1B is being processed when in fact it isn't. Or something along those lines.

I really feel bad for them, along with the author of the article.

It sounds to me like they were new graduate on OPT (F1 visa) transitioning to H1B, in which case they never have to go through the airport check yet.

Which also means that if they believed they have a H1B, they could have been misled into staying illegally one way or another (OPT has some reporting requirement, you have to notify your school every 6 months and anytime you change jobs/ locations etc).

That is very likely, most of them started on November-December 2015, so they are on the transition from OPT to H1B.

They lie at airport and claim theyre tourists.

i bet the ceo told them that the papers were still being processed and to get to work....ironically since he never paid them, he might be legally off the hook for immigration violations.

I've read (in a lawsuit!) about a former boss lying on immigration forms. It happens.

There are work VISA's also for people that have pending H1-B applications which is what I think OP meant. It would also explain why the employees weren't able to leave easily since the H1-B's are pending.

This is absolutely incorrect. There are no temporary work visas for people with "pending h1-b applications".

I worded it poorly. It's not a work visa for that case specifically, but I know there are work visa's for people who were students that have their h1-b applications in the lottery. I think non-stem students with masters get 2 chances while STEM students get 3? I work with a lot of immigrants so this is from what I understand. Sorry if I'm giving false info.

Yes, it's called "OPT", but is only for students on f-1 visas to get practical training in their areas of study. While it is temporary work authorization, it is not a work visa. There's a pretty huge difference in that h1bs offer a path to naturalization, whereas f-1 opt does not.

Thanks for the clarification. They did mention OPT and OPT extensions while they waited for the lottery, but I couldn't remember the name.