SAN JOSE — The head of a San Jose-based tech staffing firm was sentenced Monday to one year and two months in federal prison for visa fraud, prosecutors said.

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Kishore Dattapuram, 55, of Santa Clara, was indicted in February 2019 on one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud and 10 counts of substantive visa fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Dattapuram pleaded guilty to all counts in November.

Dattapuram co-owned and operated Nanosemantics Inc., a staffing firm that provided skilled employees to technology companies in the Bay Area, prosecutors said.

Nanosemantics, which received a commission for employees placed at client companies, regularly submitted H1-B applications so that foreign workers could obtain temporary authorization to live and work for employers in the United States.

Prosecutors said Dattapuram worked with two co-defendants to file H1-B applications that falsely claimed foreign workers had specific jobs waiting for them at designated companies.

On multiple occasions, Dattapuram paid companies to be listed as end clients for the foreign workers, even though he knew they would never work for those companies.

Dattapuram and his co-defendants admitted the goal of the scheme was to allow Nanosemantics to obtain visas for job candidates before securing jobs for them. This allowed the firm to place workers with employers as soon as jobs were available, rather than wait for the visa application process to conclude, prosecutors said.

The firm, as a result, had an unfair advantage over its competitors, prosecutors said.

In addition to the 14-month prison term, a judge ordered Dattapuram to serve three years of supervised release, forfeit $125,457 and pay a fine of $7,500, prosecutors said.