[nandemo]

What part is mind-numbingly awful? It's pretty standard for countries to give out student visas with the proviso that the student cannot accept employment, or can only work up to (say) 15~20 hours a week after getting a special permit. As far as visa regulations in developed countries go, this one sounds fairly reasonable to me.

> I suspect that a good lawyer will be able to recover most of it for him, especially since his presence in the US was not material to the earning of that income.

I'd be very surprised if this argument were accepted, given that presumably a lot of OP's income came from US sources (if OP was temporarily in the US, AND was being paid from non-US sources, AND the total sum was not as high as 200 grand, then arguably the case would be in a gray area [1]). Otherwise, it would be too easy to enter the US on a tourist visa and work from home, coding or teaching $foo via Skype, but good luck explaining that to the immigration authorities on entry.

However, it's not clear whether OP was actually in the US when they were selling the licenses.

[1] http://www.nationofimmigrators.com/employment-based-immigrat...