St. Louis company receives probation, fine for immigration visa fraud

ST. LOUIS – A Jefferson County landscaping company was sentenced Tuesday to probation and paid a $50,000 fine for H-2B immigration visa fraud. The company’s owner got probation and a $7,500 fine.

William J. Richardet apologized, saying, “I was guilty but I didn’t know it. As soon as I found out about it, I ended it.”

Richardet and his company, Cardinal Lawn and Landscape Inc., submitted immigration forms seeking H-2B visas for workers, falsely claiming that the workers would be employed exclusively by Cardinal. Instead, they leased out 74 workers to other companies from January 2012 to December 2017, prosecutors have said.

This story originally appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. To read the rest of the story, click here.