A photo shows the website of the fake university created by the US government. [Photo: epaper.jinghua.cn]

The US government has admitted to creating an entirely fake university to uncover visa fraud.

Since 2013, the University of Northern New Jersey has had over a thousand foreign students on its rolls, but never one class.

US Attorney for New Jersey, Paul Fishman, says the school was by set up by the Department of Homeland Security to catch visa cheats.

"The University was not a real school. Its employees were undercover HSI (Homeland Security Investigation) agents posing as corrupted administrators. The school had no instructors or educators. It had no curriculum, and no actual classes or educational activities ever occurred there."

Investigators say visa brokers had knowingly paid the fake school thousands of dollars to sponsor student visas for their clients.

Now 21 of such brokers have been arrested.

US authorities say the more-than-1000 students at the school were mostly from China and India, and that many of them had intended to maintain legal status in the US with student visas.

None of the students have been indicted.

However, it’s likely their current visas will be pulled.