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Waterville Woman Sentenced for Harboring Undocumented Aliens
Bangor, Maine – Mei Ya Zhang, 29, of Waterville, Maine, was sentenced to 15 months in prison for harboring undocumented aliens, money laundering, and tax charges, announced United States Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II.
Zhang was also ordered to pay more than $88,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as part of her sentence. She previously pled guilty to the charges on June 5, 2013.
According to court records, Zhang managed the Twin Super Buffet in Brewer, Maine, between 2006 and 2011. During that time, she brought undocumented aliens into Maine to work at the buffet, housing them in squalid conditions and paying them under the table with cash generated illegally by their employment.
The investigation revealed that about half of the employees at the buffet over that period were undocumented, and that Zhang’s activities concealed about $400,000 in wages and thwarted the collection of about $88,000 in employment taxes.
In imposing sentence, Chief Judge John A. Woodcock, Jr. noted that a primary obligation of citizenship is to obey the law. Zhang’s actions, he said, unfairly competed with legitimate restaurants that paid their employees fair wages and properly withheld and remitted employment taxes to the government.
The investigation was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, IRS-Criminal Investigation, and the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Inspector General, Office of Labor Racketeering & Fraud Investigations, with assistance from the Brewer Police Department.
Contact: Donald E. Clark, Assistant United States Attorney, (207) 780-3257.
Key Facts
- State: Maine
- Category: White Collar Crime|Human Trafficking|Fraud & Financial Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release ↗
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