Berkeley Landlord, Son Indicted
Other names added as co-conspirators
Debra Levi Holtz, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 2, 2000
©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/02/02/MN15566.DTL


BERKELEY -- A wealthy Berkeley landlord and his son were indicted yesterday by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to illegally bring aliens into the United States from India by submitting false visa applications.


Lakireddy Bali Reddy, 62, also faces two counts of ``transportation of a minor in foreign commerce for illegal sexual activity,'' according to the indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Oakland.

Reddy, who owns an estimated $70 million in real estate in the East Bay, is charged with two additional counts of importing girls for immoral purposes and harboring them in a Berkeley apartment.

The indictment, which adds unnamed co-conspirators, replaces criminal complaints filed last month against Reddy and his son, Vijay Lakireddy, 30, and adds other charges against each. The father and son, who are free on bail, are scheduled to be arraigned on the indictment in U.S. District Court on Monday.

Lakireddy declined to comment on the indictment yesterday.

Like the previous criminal complaints, the indictment alleges that Reddy arranged to bring Indian citizens to the United States using special high-tech visas and that Lakireddy submitted fraudulent petitions to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, saying that the workers would be employed at his company, Active Tech Solutions in Berkeley. One of the workers was promised a $42,500-a-year computer programming job.

The workers were, instead, employed by Reddy and Lakireddy in their Pasand restaurants in Berkeley and Santa Clara, as well as in their apartment and office buildings in Berkeley, authorities allege.

Reddy also arranged for two teenage sisters to enter the country illegally as dependents of the workers -- for sexual purposes, according to the indictment. The criminal complaints alleged that Reddy brought the girls to Berkeley to have sex with him.

Meanwhile, Berkeley police said yesterday that they found a bottle of Viagra with Reddy's name on it in the apartment he occasionally shared with the two teenage girls and a young woman.

The indictment identified one of the girls as Chanti Jyotsna Devi Prattipati, who posed under the name Sitha Vemireddy when she came to Berkeley in August. Her younger sister is not named in the indictment and is in protective federal custody.

The investigation into Reddy began when 17-year-old Prattipati died from accidental carbon monoxide exposure in a Berkeley apartment owned by Reddy and where he allegedly engaged in sex repeatedly with the two girls and a young Indian woman.

If convicted of all counts against him, Reddy faces a maximum of 70 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Lakireddy faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $750,000 fine if found guilty of all counts.


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