Capital One’s Indian Mafia Exposed: Massive H-1B Kickback Scheme Displaces American Workers

Inflated rates, fake resumes, and millions of dollars in kickbacks while American tech workers get shown the door

For the past couple of months, I’ve been covering Indian-led hiring discrimination, visa fraud, and incompetence scandals at various American companies, including Capital One. I can now report that senior Indian managers at Capital One are accused of running a massive kickback racket that funnels millions through a hidden network of Indian-owned bodyshops firms in the Richmond, Virginia area. In short, American tech workers are pushed out of Capital One, replaced with underpaid H-1B, F-1, and H-4 visa holders with phony credentials while managers pocket the difference between inflated billing rates and the contractors’ low salaries. This is exactly the kind of issue that Project Firewall, the Department of Labor’s initiative to investigate companies engaging in wage theft, visa fraud, and discrimination against Americans, should look into. (A compilation of my previous reporting on Capital One can be found here.)

Capital One’s Indian Kickback Machine and How it Works

The scheme is incredibly simple and profitable: Capital One managers steer contracts to a tight circle of preferred bodyshops, the list of which includes GC Services, Apex, Pyramid, Artech Information, Astyra, Diversant, Ascendion, Pride Technologies, ENGEN, and more. These firms then subcontract the actual staffing to another layer of obscure, Indian-run LLCs clustered in the Richmond-Glen Allen area, including Artifiction LLC, Intellect Technologies, Global Sumi Technologies Inc., Arka Technologies, Rising Tides Solutions LLC, and many more. These sub-vendors are allegedly run by relatives, college buddies, or close associates of the Capital One directors who are signing the deals. Capital One directors Ranjit Kasanaboina, Srini Vasamsetti, Ganesh Kandula, Satish Kesiboyana, and others are implicated in the scandal (SEE UPDATES BELOW FOR INDIVIDUALS/CORPORATIONS WHOSE NAMES ARE CROSSED OUT).

The theft works like so: a contractor billed to Capital One at a rate of, say, $120-160 per hour may only get paid $60-70 an hour. The remaining $50-90 is split, with part of it going to the primary bodyshop, part going to the sub-vendor, and part kicked back to Capital One managers in the form of cash or laundered payments.

This process has accelerated the displacement of American workers from Capital One. Countless teams have seen Americans with decades of experience inexplicably laid off or reassigned only to see their positions filled weeks later by H-1Bs who routinely exaggerate or outright lie about their previous employment and skills. Labor condition applications are allegedly doctored to show false job conditions, including false descriptions of roles and worksites, evading Department of Labor scrutiny while the real money is sent offshore or into personal accounts. A former Indian-American intern at Capital One sheds further light on this:

Capital One interns are given offers only if they went to the boot camp of one of the Indian hiring persons’ daughters. I got rejected because I didn’t go to the bootcamp, I am Indian BTW.

Later I didn’t get a full-time job because as a U.S. citizen I would be a direct hire and the Indian consulting companies wouldn’t get the kickbacks by hiring H-1Bs.

My source claims Capital One’s own leadership may also be complicit in burying complaints in order to protect this kickback network. I have written about the corrupt nature of Indian bodyshops here. This Indian mafia scheme is a clear conspiracy to defraud Capital One and represents a catastrophic breach of trust, flagrant violations of business ethics, and potential federal labor law violations.

Amer Zec Alleges Anti-American Racism at Capital One

This alleged kickback scheme is by far not the only “Indian mafia” related scandal at Capital One. In October, I reported on the case of Amer Zec, a Capital One engineer who accused Indian managers of retaliating against him as part of a broader pattern of Indian ethnic nepotism and racism against American employees.

In an internal email, Zec accuses former boss Adam Day, director Shekar Jha, and senior manager Prathyusha Gandra of retaliating against him for taking parental leave, which he was legally entitled to under both Washington state and federal law. Following his return from leave in 2023, Zec claims his performance rating dropped from “Strong” to “Inconsistent” based solely on a disputed communication issue, despite his performance continuing to be strong, alleging this was punishment for his absence and backed by video evidence of calibration discussions where he alleges Capital One leaders threw him “under the bus.”

This pattern continued after Zec took PMLA leave in late 2024, triggered by stress-induced syncope that he attributes to Capital One’s increasingly toxic workplace environment. Upon his return, Zec claims leadership failed to reintegrate him, putting him under a PIP (performance improvement plan) on spurious grounds while adding an Indian engineer, Ganapathi Madamamadakala, to erode his authority. Among other allegations, Zec claims his autonomy was reduced, he was handed “breadcrumb” assignments that he characterized as “chasing the squirrels,” was excluded from key meetings and training sessions (for example, he was denied SRE certification as he worked from home), and that he was gaslit in one-on-one interviews where minor issues were inflated into “cardinal mistakes.” He argues this was all by design in order for Capital One to meet “talent distribution requirements,” with his managers using him as an “easy target” while favoring others (mainly Indians).

Zec alleges a conspiracy of Indian ethnic nepotism, accusing a clique of Indian leaders such as Jha, Gandra, and Madamamadakala of “mobbing” him out of Capital One to replace him with another Indian:

Nepotism and discrimination on the basis of national background. It is pretty clear and evident from my case, as well as from a few other shared experiences, that a group of people of the same national background has organized and orchestrated mobbing in order to push me out of leadership role in order to provide a secure seat for ‘one of theirs.’ Numerous written and video evidence exists. On my premises, stored away from CapitalOne computer systems. Same as they did to this person and many others. While this might not be visible to the associates at the lower levels (below management), it is very clear and obvious at the leadership levels. It is sad and paradoxical that those who are in these seats, barely speak fluent English and struggle with punctuation, yet a weak ‘Communication’ competency rating is reserved for someone like me who speaks two global languages fluently. Pure nepotism, politics and discrimination…

As an example, he cites how he was ranked poorly on communication despite being fluently bilingual while his Indian colleagues often cannot even speak understandable English. Zec states that other employees at Capital One have been treated similarly, with video and written evidence that he has collected, and attacks “bait and switch” recruitment tactics such as promising cutting-edge tech like Kubernetes but deliver outdated Java 8 and XML work.

Finally, Zec indicts Capital One’s PIP process as a sham, as it lacks measurable goals and is used to force out newcomers who are unwilling to work 80-hour weeks. This was corroborated by another former Capital One employee:

A key point is that the problem does not originate with Indians, they just show up and play the game by their cultural rules. All the PIPs and distribution curves and career promotion issues are universal.

The most pernicious thing he mentions is specifically hiring/staffing new employees for the purpose of sacrificing them next performance cycle and protecting ‘your’ people. Standard practice.

We had a new lesbian senior leader one year and every team went out and hired a women with specific orders to reject all male candidates.

They never REALLY allowed him to pass his first PIP, he played games and escaped it and they just saved him to use for the next round. He had non-zero value as a spare body that allowed his new manager to make her bi-yearly sacrifice without losing one of her people.

Another Capital One worker discusses how the company’s performance reviews are designed to get white employees fired:

Basically they have a “lives the values” metric on the review that’s just a way to block white people. If your not participating in a DEI group like “blacks in tech” they say you’re not “living the values” but if you try to join such a group as a white guy they just ghost you.

So performance review rolls around, and you get hit for not joining a group that you’re functionally unable to join. That’s the story in the card tech portfolio at least.

Zec also attacks systemic issues with the company such as over-processization (“enshittification”) that make Capital One more inefficient and demands HR-only talks, threatening to escalate to the Department of Labor, USCIS, ICE, and other venues if his issues are not resolved.

(Note: after I originally published a story on Zec’s allegations in October, I was contacted by another source at Capital One who corroborated his allegations. However, I did not receive a reply to my request for more information, so I cannot share more at this time.)

A Pattern of Indian Abuse and Fraud at Capital One

These stories from Capital One are common and have resulted in its near-complete takeover by Indian managers and contractors. Another source alleges that over half the staffers at Capital One’s Plano, Texas facility are Indians on H-1Bs and that if you’re an American working at Capital One’s Plano facility, “you’re likely one of two or three actual Americans in a meeting with 15 Indians.” Capital One also operates “India Data Labs,” characterized as a massive building full of Indian “slaves” on H-1Bs. American staffers are forced to take work calls at 7am or 8pm in order to coordinate with offshore Indian contractors, and the source claims he’s witnessed Indians at the Plano facility washing themselves in sinks. Another source claims that roughly 75 percent of the management in his organization are current or former H-1B visas, most of whom have less than five years of engineering experience. During the last cycle, there were nine promotions to senior director, all of whom were current or former H-1Bs. There were also 15 promotions to director, 12 of whom were current or former H-1Bs (all Indian).

Another former Capital One employee describes the company as “hav[ing] an epidemic of ass kissing middle managers who do nothing but placate their bosses while doing no work (Indians).” The former employee worked as a financial analyst “and had to contact Ajeet, Apresh, or Adshush every other day to have GitHub database refreshes run.” The Indian employees would never respond to their messages and acted offended when they were asked to do their jobs. I’ve received multiple allegations that Indians abuse stack-ranking at Capital One to get their white and American colleagues fired, though another source offers a counterpoint here. As the former employee states, “[w]e graduated our first financial rotation year and had a Zoom call during COVID with potential next managers. The two Indians gave completely incoherent presentations and obviously no one selected them so we were randomly assigned to them. They can’t speak English coherently, they are awful at their jobs.”

An individual who interviewed twice for a software developer position at Capitol One’s facility in Tyson, Virginia contacted me, believing he was passed over because he was not Indian. The individual provided a list of the interviews and interviewers he dealt with during the application process:

As you can see, all but one of the names on the list is Indian. Additionally, he notes that he had to pass a coding exam on CodeSignal to even qualify for the interview.

Yet another ex-employee revealed that Capital One employs a large number of Indian contractors from bodyshops like Cognizant, which has been prosecuted by the Department of Labor for racist discrimination against non-Indians. The ex-employee states that not only are Indian Capital One employees extremely racist towards whites, they are racist towards every non-Indian. A current employee at Capital One’s Plano facility corroborates these allegations, stating that Indian employees are extraordinarily rude, unpleasant, and hostile to their non-Indian colleagues. As he put it, “it’s almost like they all know they want to replace [A]mericans, but since it’s not work appropriate to discuss, they just interact with [A]mericans as little as possible to save face.” Another source reaches out to reveal how Capital One promotes unqualified minorities (including Indians) over white men:

After managers had had discussions about who was going to get promoted, they would look at the approved promotion list.

And if there weren’t enough women or minorities on the list, they would pull people from the reject list and promote them anyway.

White men were at a definite disadvantage in this process as they never got pulled from the list. It was much harder for them to move up, and they ended up having to report to people who were lower performers.

They continue:

And you were absolutely right in that Indians would only hire Indians. I’ve been hearing about that for years. Entire groups would be Indian only, but there would be no white-only groups even in a white majority area.

The end result is a toxic workplace environment for non-Indian employees. Another former employee of Capital One described it as “the worst place I have ever worked” due to its gossipy, DEI-poisoned culture. He describes Capital One as having an “extremely gynocentric,” HR-fixated culture: “Everyone is always whispering about someone else. If you don’t, they’re whispering about you.” White men are treated like second-class citizens and women and minorities cannot be criticized or questioned ever. He also confirms that PIP abuse is rampant at the company.

Capital One is also facing multiple allegations of visa fraud. An ex-employee reports that there are a large number of Indian women employed at Capital One who deliberately try to have anchor babies to make their stays permanent. Another staffer reports direct evidence of visa fraud in the former of a recently-fired engineer who was caught supplementing his income by recommending people who were unqualified and doing their coding tests for them. “He was also using his company phone to send pictures that should never appear on a corporate network.” Another source states that Capital One gets regular visits from the Indian embassy to assist H-1Bs in maintaining their visas:

[I]n a team meeting last week, the Indians were discussing having to go get their paperwork updated when it was revealed by one of them that the Indian embassy visits the Capital One HQ at least once a quarter to help employees keep their paperwork up to date. There are so many Indian employees working at the corporate office that the embassy comes over multiple times a year.

Indian H-1Bs at Capital One are consistently incompetent, masked by the fact that American team members pick up the slack. The pattern the whistleblower has observed is this: H-1Bs have short stints as junior engineers before being quickly promoted to senior management. He gives a few examples:

A coworker does not do her job well, so others pick up the slack filling in the gaps - she does well on her evals by doing things outside of her job (scheduling social events, networking events, etc.)

Looking at my org chart, you can pick any manager between me and my SVP, there is an 80% chance they are Indian, and if they are Indian, there is a greater than 70 percent chance they came over on an H-1B (some are now GC holders now) and almost all of them worked for less than five years as an engineer, then moved into engineering manager/senior engineering manager/director/senior director/VP roles. None of them know how to use the tools we use, so we often end up with spreadsheets containing project plans and roadmaps. In fact, one director got promoted to director after getting an award for creating a planning spreadsheet for the only successful project he contributed to as an engineer.

When we had a senior manager leave (he was PIPd and opted out; he was also an H-1B that came from Microsoft), he was replaced with another former H-1B (he is a naturalized citizen who has been here for 27 years, seems competent so far).

He sums it up by saying that he has engineers who report to him that have more experience than the director and senior director he reports to. Another source writes that Capital One has been firing or laying off American workers with more than a decade of experience in favor of H-1Bs who are incapable of doing their jobs. He states that the previous Indian director of his department knew absolutely nothing about what his team actually did and had no desire to learn it. Half of his team was fired via PIPs, “not replaced within our team, but used to justify new hires in other teams the Indian director manages.”

The Department of Labor Must Take Action Against Capital One

The alleged kickback scheme among Indian managers at Capital One fits a clear pattern of Indian discrimination against American employees. Capital One has fostered a hostile work environment that violates multiple federal labor laws, including anti-discrimination laws. The Department of Labor must investigate these claims.

UPDATE (12:40 PM Eastern, 11/25/2025)

I have been contacted by a representative from Global Sumi Technologies Inc. who has denied the allegations. This representative also published the DM they sent me as a comment below.

UPDATE (4:08 PM Eastern, 11/25/2025)

A representative for Artifiction LLC and Intellect Technologies has also contacted me denying the allegations. They provided this link here as an example of their posts on job boards.

UPDATE (6:32 PM Eastern, 11/25/2025)

A representative from Arka Technologies has contacted me denying the allegations.

UPDATE (6:44 PM Eastern, 11/25/2025)

A representative from Rising Tides Solutions LLC has also contacted me to deny the allegations.

UPDATE (1:52 PM Eastern, 12/1/2025)

Satish Kesiboyana has contacted me to deny the allegations, noting that he resigned from Capital One several years before the allegations made in my article. He points to a comment by Paul here as evidence that he may have been confused with other individuals involved in the alleged scheme.

UPDATE (1:42 PM Eastern, 12/5/2025)

One of the firms mentioned has denied the allegations and requested I remove their name from the article.

UPDATE (5:02 PM Eastern, 2/17/2026)

Substack has removed several of the images from this post (pertaining to Amer Zec’s allegations against Capital One), citing violations of their Content Guidelines.

If you are a whistleblower/have insider information from Capital One or any other corporation engaged in similar abuses, feel free to reach out to me via Substack DMs, X/Twitter DMs, or email at mattforney [at] protonmail [dot] com. All communications are confidential and your anonymity will be protected.

If you enjoyed this article, please consider subscribing by clicking here. Most articles on this blog are free, but your support gives you access to paywalled articles and enables me to do this work. You can also make a one-time donation here (note: this does not give you access to paywalled articles, unfortunately). Follow me on X/Twitter, where I post stories more frequently, here.