An undercover federal agent handed Jose Luis Morales Salgado $500 on January 22, 2025. It was a deposit on a $4,000 staged robbery, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Missouri. Salgado had agreed to arrange the encounter so the agent could report a violent crime and seek U nonimmigrant status. Authorities arrested him eight days later.
On July 22, 2026, U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips sentenced Salgado to 21 months in federal prison. The court also ordered him to forfeit $61,200. Salgado had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to fraudulently obtain immigration visas and admitted that people paid him thousands of dollars to arrange robberies they planned to report as real.
The scene followed a pattern. Participants said they had car trouble and pulled over. Another vehicle arrived, and a person wearing a medical mask approached with a gun. The person struck the participants in the head or face, took their cash and typically fired two rounds into their vehicle. Salgado admitted recruiting the people who posed as robbers and telling the purported victims what to report to police.
Court documents described in the Justice Department's sentencing announcement identified 11 staged robberies involving 33 purported victims between December 29, 2021, and July 13, 2024. Eighteen of those people submitted U visa petitions, prosecutors said.
A principal petitioner for U nonimmigrant status files Form I-918 with a Supplement B signed by an authorized certifying official. The certification addresses qualifying criminal activity and the person's helpfulness to authorities. USCIS decides the petition. Its instructions also exclude a person culpable for the qualifying criminal activity from recognition as that crime's victim. Those standards do not determine the eligibility of anyone connected to this prosecution.
The releases do not say whether USCIS approved any of the 18 petitions or took another action on them. Kansas City police linked the reported robberies partly through cartridge-case markings. Investigators believed the same gun had been used at all 11 scenes.
Sources
- Federal sentencing announcementU.S. Attorney's Office, Western District of Missouri
- Supplement B instructionsU.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Partially verified from official sources. The underlying judgment, plea agreement, investigative records, and defense position were not reviewed. General information only; this article does not provide legal advice.
Updated: July 28, 2026