Peter Kuperman banned from U.S.

There are many faces of Peter Kuperman.

The 1996 Penn alumnus is a San Francisco hedge fund manager by day and a chef by night; he created a Facebook group aiming to fix the high-rise elevators and an internship program for Management and Technology students.

Now he is in Toronto, banned from the United States for life because he committed immigration fraud by working in the U.S. without a proper visa.

But Kuperman and the Penn students he has employed are all shocked at the severity of his punishment.

A Canadian citizen who works in San Francisco, Kuperman applied for an E-2 visa - an employment visa for foreign nationals whose businesses benefit the U.S. economy.

On Jan. 23, he received a letter from the U.S. Consulate saying that his visa had been approved, and he traveled to the consulate in Toronto on Feb. 7 to get his passport stamped - a "99.9-percent successful" procedure, Kuperman said.

He said he did not plan to stay for long, so he brought only a carry-on suitcase.

Then, after his meeting at the consulate on Feb. 9, Kuperman was detained and asked to bring documentation of his stays in the U.S. over the last eighteen months, he added.

The consulate had found that he had not renewed his past E-2 visa.

His information was sent to the visa advisory unit in Washington, - a process that lasts several months - and his lawyer was told that Kuperman should not return to the U.S.

"This is so far from normalcy and reality," Kuperman said. "It is laughable that someone of my standing in the community would be sent with this punishment."

Two days later, he was scheduled to travel to Washington along with the Penn interns he employs for his hedge fund, QED Benchmark, each summer.

They were supposed to meet with the media services company The Motley Fool, with whom a partnership was in the works.

The interns received an e-mail from Kuperman before the meeting, encouraging them to attend without him.

He also urged them to write letters about their internship experiences for him to send to Washington and asked them to get in touch with any contacts they have in the nation's capital.

Engineering and Wharton sophomore Jonathan Haski interned for QED last summer from his home.

Haski still works for Kuperman and said he is in contact with him once a week.

In his letter describing his internship, he said he wrote that it was a "valuable experience."

"You don't normally get the opportunity to work for a hedge fund after your freshman year of college," he said.

He added that Kuperman had mentioned visa trouble in the past, citing another circumstance in which Kuperman had to delay dinner due to "immigrant problems."

Vikramjit Chawla, an Engineering and Wharton sophomore who also worked for Kuperman from home last summer, has been attempting to contact California Sen. Dianne Feinstein in order to gain support for reconsideration of Kuperman's ban.

A Bay Area resident, Chawla e-mailed Feinstein's office but has not heard back.

Meanwhile, Kuperman is in Toronto, hoping that Washington will change its mind.

"I think [the ban from the U.S.] is ridiculous," he said. "The economy needs all the help we can get, and I have a demonstrated track record of making money and employing people," Kuperman said.

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