DHS's Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) said this year it is actively working with Homeland Security Investigations to identify and investigate fraud tied to STEM OPT employment. It didn't describe this as a general warning about bad actors somewhere out there. It named three specific business types as the pattern it keeps finding: IT recruitment firms, consulting companies, and staffing agencies — categories that have drawn scrutiny since the STEM OPT rule was finalized in 2016.

Naming the category isn't the same as accusing every company in it. But if you're evaluating any agency in this space, including ours, these are the specific things worth checking.

The red flags DHS actually lists

On the employer side, investigators flagged patterns including unoccupied or non-operational business addresses, companies run out of residential locations with no real employees, offshore HR and payroll with no U.S. oversight, staff who can't describe what the business actually does, conflicting statements about employment activity, students listed as "employed" who never actually work, and business phone numbers that don't function.

On the student-facing side, the warning points to vague or thin company websites, job duties that don't match what's written on your Form I-983 training plan, work locations that don't make sense for the stated role, and communication that happens almost entirely through messaging apps rather than official channels.

What you legally cannot be charged for

Separate from the fraud warning, U.S. Department of Labor Fact Sheet #62H is explicit about H-1B pay deductions. An employer cannot require a worker to pay any part of the statutory ACWIA training and processing fee, cannot deduct any part of the $500 fraud prevention and detection fee, and cannot pass along attorney fees or the premium processing fee tied to filing the H-1B petition. These are classified as employer business expenses by law, not costs that can be shifted onto the candidate under any arrangement, no matter how the contract is worded.

A short checklist before you sign anything

  • Does the company have a real, staffed, checkable U.S. office address — not a mailbox or a residential address?
  • Will your actual day-to-day work match what's written on your I-983 training plan, if you're on STEM OPT?
  • Is communication through a working phone number and company email, not only WhatsApp or WeChat?
  • Is the company asking you to pay any H-1B filing-related fee directly? (If yes, that's not a judgment call — it's against the rule above.)
  • Can you verify E-Verify enrollment, which STEM OPT training-plan employers are required to maintain?

We covered the broader question of telling different placement business models apart in a separate, more general guide — this one is specifically about the fraud pattern DHS has called out by name.

The bottom line

None of this is a reason to be afraid of placement services generally — it's a reason to ask specific, checkable questions instead of trusting a homepage. A company with nothing to hide will answer every item on this list directly, usually within one phone call.