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Florida Labor Ring Exposed
Bladimir Moreno, a permanent resident of the United States and citizen of Mexico, and his associates have been charged with running a labor contracting company for H-2A agricultural workers that subjected multiple Mexican H-2A workers to forced labor.
Between 2015 and 2017, the defendants employed hundreds of H-2A workers in Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, and North Carolina to harvest fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural products. The workers were subjected to physically demanding labor, and were forced to live in crowded, unsanitary, and degrading conditions.
According to the indictment, the defendants used coercive means to obtain labor from the workers, including imposing debts on them, confiscating their passports, and threatening them with arrest, jail time, and deportation. They also isolated the workers, limiting their ability to interact with anyone other than LVH employees.
The indictment alleges that the defendants operated Los Villatoros Harvesting (LVH) as a criminal enterprise, committing visa fraud and fraud in foreign labor contracting. They also harbored H-2A workers in the United States after their visas had expired for financial gain.
The Palm Beach County Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, investigated the case with assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor – Office of the Inspector General, and the U.S. Department of State – Diplomatic Security Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Murray and Trial Attorneys Avner Shapiro and Maryam Zhuravitsky of the Civil Rights Division will prosecute the case.
An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed one or more violations of federal criminal law, and every defendant is presumed innocent unless, and until, proven guilty.
Moreno, Christina Gamez, a citizen of the United States who worked for LVH, and Guadalupe Mendes Mendoza, a citizen of Mexico who worked as a manager and supervisor for LVH, were charged with various crimes including conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, conspiracy to commit forced labor, forced labor, and conspiracy to obstruct proceedings before departments, agencies, and committees.
The indictment alleges that the defendants committed the RICO conspiracy by operating LVH as a criminal scheme, obtaining hundreds of hours of physically demanding agricultural labor from the victimized H-2A workers through coercive means, suggesting to workers that if they failed to comply with the defendants’ demands, they or their family members could be physically harmed.
Key Facts
- State: Florida
- Category: Organized Crime|Human Trafficking|White Collar Crime
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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