Firas Majeed, Shatha Abbas Pay $18K for Holding Worker Hostage

Firas Majeed, 45, and Shatha Abbas, 39, are walking free — but not unscathed — after being sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to pay $18,270 in restitution for holding an Indonesian woman in forced labor at their El Cajon home. The couple admitted to seizing the victim’s passport and forcing her to work up to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, without pay, in a case federal prosecutors are calling modern-day slavery.

The victim, whose identity remains protected, was rescued on March 22, 2016, after slipping a note to a healthcare worker who had visited the home. The translated message triggered an investigation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), leading agents to the couple’s residence in El Cajon. Authorities found the woman isolated, speaking no English, with no money, and forbidden from leaving the house except to take out trash.

Majeed and Abbas pleaded guilty on August 18, 2016, before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jan M. Adler to violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 1597 — Unlawful Conduct with Respect to Immigration Documents. The charge stems from their illegal retention of the victim’s passport to maintain her labor between November 2015 and March 2016. The scheme began after the woman was allegedly held for five years in Dubai, performing 20-hour days of unpaid domestic work for relatives of Abbas, before being shipped to California like cargo.

Investigators from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division calculated that the woman was owed $18,270 for 2,520 regular hours and 800 overtime hours. She was initially given $7,280 seized from the defendants’ home, and Majeed and Abbas paid the remaining $10,990 as part of their plea agreement. Still, no payout erases the psychological toll of years spent in servitude.

“Forcing someone to work under these horrible conditions is slavery, pure and simple,” said U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy. David Shaw, HSI special agent in charge, called the couple’s actions ‘reprehensible’ and emphasized that accountability sends a message: human traffickers will be hunted down. The case, prosecuted under USAO California, is Case Number 16CR0819-JMA.

“We have been seeing more and more of these types of domestic servitude cases,” said Rodolfo Cortez, district director of the Wage and Hour Division in San Diego. With vulnerable immigrants often trapped in private homes, he warned: “If you are evading the law, you will be caught and held accountable.” The sentence may be light, but the stigma of being branded traffickers sticks far longer than jail time ever could.