Date: Oct. 28, 2023

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NEWARK - A Monmouth County, New Jersey, doctor was sentenced today to 27 months in prison for harboring two undocumented women from India and failing to pay taxes on their wages, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger announced.

Harsha Sahni, of Tinton Falls, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Georgette Castner to an information charging her with one count of conspiracy to conceal and harbor aliens and one count of filing a false tax return. Judge Castner imposed the sentence today in Trenton federal court.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

From 2013 through August 2021, Sahni conspired with others to conceal and harbor two foreign nationals from India, who Sahni recruited to work for Sahni and her family in their homes in New Jersey. Sahni harbored the victims for her and her conspirators' financial gain and paid the victims' families in India in exchange for their labor.

Sahni caused the victims to believe that they would be arrested and deported if they interacted with law enforcement. Sahni instructed the victims to tell other people that they were related to Sahni, and Sahni used fake names and addresses in furtherance of the conspiracy. From 2013 to 2019, Sahni also failed to pay certain taxes notwithstanding that the victims were Sahni's household employees.

In addition to the prison term, Judge Castner sentenced Sahni to two years of supervised release and ordered restitution of $728,327. The defendant must also pay up to $200,000 for specific medical bills.

U.S. Attorney Sellinger credited special agents of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), New York Field Office, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Thomas Fattorusso; special agents of Homeland Security Investigations Newark, under the direction of Acting Special Agent in Charge Spiros Karabinas; and special agents of the U.S. Department of State, Diplomatic Security Service, New York Field Office, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Keith J. Byrne, with the investigation leading to the sentencing.

The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Kogan of the U.S. Attorney's Office Cybercrime Unit in Newark.

IRS-CI is the criminal investigative arm of the IRS, responsible for conducting financial crime investigations, including tax fraud, narcotics trafficking, money-laundering, public corruption, healthcare fraud, identity theft and more. IRS-CI special agents are the only federal law enforcement agents with investigative jurisdiction over violations of the Internal Revenue Code, obtaining a more than a 90 percent federal conviction rate. The agency has 20 field offices located across the U.S. and 12 attaché posts abroad.