A federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted two Pakistanis for conspiring to get immigration documents fraudulently.

The accused, Shabir Ahmed of Brooklyn and Mohammad Yaqoob Bhatti, 45, of Jackson Heights, New York, pleaded not guilty.

The court papers said Ahmed came to the US legally. But when his visa expired, he approached Bhatti for help.

With Bhatti's assistance, Ahmed went to the Pakistani consulate in New York for a new passport. "At the consulate, Ahmed used the name of Farooq Khan and that person's old passport number and other identifiers to obtain a new passport," Newsday reported, quoting officials.

Ahmed paid Bhatti $25,000 for identification documents containing the new name, according to the indictment. Again with Bhatti's help, Ahmed applied for a green card using the new passport, and got it eventually, the indictment said.

He used the new green card to travel outside the country. But already officials were developing a case. When he returned at New York's John F Kennedy airport on December 12 last year, he was arrested and charged with conspiracy and fraud.

Three other men were also charged earlier in the case for having falsely obtained immigration documents, the report in Newsday said.

The justice department is probing a scheme to bring Pakistanis using fraudulent documents.

But the current case has no link to terrorism, officials said. The investigation continues, however, on how they could get a green card so easily.