L.A. firm at center of huge human-smuggling case

A Westwood company is at the center of a federal indictment alleging a massive human-smuggling ring involving Thai workers.

The indictment alleges that the defendants enticed the Thai immigrants to come to the United States with false promises of lucrative jobs. The workers had their passports confiscated and were not paid the wages outlined in their contracts, the FBI said.

The indictment alleges that Global Horizons Manpower Inc. was involved in a scheme to coerce the labor and services of about 400 Thai nationals brought to the United States from May 2004 through September 2005 to work on farms across the country under a federal agricultural guest-worker program, the FBI said in a news release.

Named in the indictment are Mordechai Orian, Pranee Tubchumpol, Shane Germann and Sam Wongsesanit, all of Global Horizons Manpower.

Thai labor recruiters Ratawan Chunharutai and Podjanee Sinchai were also charged with engaging in the conspiracy to commit forced labor, the FBI said.

Representatives of the company could not be reached for comment.

According to a statement from the FBI: "The defendants arranged for the Thai workers to pay high recruitment fees, which were financed by debts secured with the workers' family property and homes. Significant portions of these fees went to the defendants themselves. After arrival in the United States, the defendants confiscated the Thai nationals' passports and failed to honor the employment contracts.

"The defendants maintained the Thai nationals' labor by threatening to send them back to Thailand, knowing they would face serious economic harms created by the debts. The indictment also alleges that the defendants confined a group of Thai guest workers at Maui Pineapple Farm and demanded an additional fee of $3,750 to keep their jobs with Global Horizons. Those workers who refused to pay the additional fee were sent back home to Thailand with unpaid debts, subjecting them to the high risk of losing their family homes and land."

-- Robert J. Lopez

Comments

[tom]

People are mean.

[Lee B.]

I hope everyone involved in this modern-day slave trading gets put away for life. Ghastly.

[Khrystyne]

SHAME ON YOU, YOU GREEDY MONSTERS. I HOPE KARMA BITES YOU & BITES YOU HARD.

[kgoddess]

So sad what some people are willing to do to other people...all in the name of money.

[blackone]

There are more slaves, NOW, than at any time in human history: "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery" by E. Benjamin Skinner

[mary]

An Israeli sets up shop in California and hires traffickers to snatch people from Thailand to work farms in Hawaii .
The american farmers must have paid Global Horizon hefty fees ,
What with the extra air fare from the opposite side of the planet and high salaries for ' handlers ' ,
The farmers $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ could probably have afforded to hire locals .

Global Horizon staff ALL need to be euthanized ASAP .
Too bad a bazillion taxpayer dollars will be lost prosecuting then ,
Most of them will play like Roman Polanski , & skip bail .

[RiddleMeThis]

How come I don't see the kind of vehement anti-immigrant invective in the comments section when it deals with Thai immigrants, but people post all kinds of mean-spirited rhetoric when the immigrants in question are Latin American in origin? What, you think Latin American women aren't coerced with these kinds of phony promises, don't get held for ransom for additional money, and aren't made to work in quasi slavery conditions? For what it's worth, I hope everyone involved in this scheme is put away, liens placed on their property, and their criminal record haunts them for every position they apply for, even as maintenance of a McDonald's.

[jack]

The man at the helm is Mordechai Orian, 45, President and CEO of the Los Angeles-based Global Horizons Manpower Inc., a labor contracting group. Five of his affiliates and contractors were also charged in the scheme.

Orian gave tens of thousands of dollars to the National Republican Congressional Committee on eight occasions between 2004 and 2006, according to the election records database Newsmeat. His largest contribution of $11,000 came on July 13, 2006. Orian also gave $2000 to the GOP-affiliated Restore America PAC twice in that period.

During those years the Republican-led Congress debated and sought to pass a major immigration reform bill that involved, among many other things, an expanded guest-worker program. In 2006, Global Horizons was implicated for violating labor laws and underpaying 88 Thai workers. Orian initially denied the charges but ultimately settled the case for $300,000.

[johnjasonchundotcom]

Federal Prison! 5-10 years each! And then Deport them!

[Adam]

This country is so goddamn corrupt.

[woof-woof]

More on the story from the big Honolulu newspaper.

http://www.staradvertiser.com/news/20100903_6_accused_in_human_trafficking_case.html

[kanank]

Why is this shocking? Are we all so naive? This kind of thing is more common and very widespread. Human trafficking and exploitation is happening at a far bigger scale than ever before. The govt's laws in enforcing behavior of these kinds of companies is so outdated and not frequent enough to deter from other people/firms doing this. we as a society have failed to protect the rights of these workers.
Why does the govt think it can enact laws but enforce it or monitor it enough to deter from people violating it?
The current and former administrations have failed to protect our homeland and as a result we are fighting two major wars, few drug wars south of our border and we are left with 12 million illegal aliens eating our taxes and breeding babies like bedbugs.

[q]

where are the 400 people now?

[Land Shark]

In 2006, as discussed in a 2007 law review at campbell.edu by Saby Ghoshray, Global Horizons' CEO Mordechai Orian sued for unfair competition a competitor it claimed was using illegally cheap immigrant labor. Justifying the suit (at footnote 35) Orian said "“Competitors hiring illegal immigrants is [sic] hurting our business badly, . . . It’s to the point that doing business legally isn’t worth it.” And, through August of 2006 Orian was a major political contributor to immigration "reform" to make it tougher.

The fact that the allegations in the FBI complaint cover the pre-lawsuit 2004 to 2005 period is stunning if true -- because it seemed at that point Orian was trying his best to operate legally against unscrupulous competitors, but the FBI now alleges exactly the opposite.

The implications of this are stunning. It shows that enforcement of immigration laws can be used,and has been used, to create a lucrative slave operation within the USA because of the threat of turning someone in to the INS. As FBI Special Agent Tom Simons said to the Washington Post "In the old days, they used to keep slaves in their places with whips and chains. Today it's done with economic threats and intimidation." It appears this slavery operation is the tip of the iceberg, and one major key to its profitability is tough immigration laws.

[Bangkok-based]

Yo 'LandShark' et al... there is MUCH more than meets the eye to this story - stay tuned! None of the handful of plaintiffs (from the total number of workers) will be returning to their country - nor did they ever have any desire whatsoever to do so. The rudimentary on-site accommodations provided laborers here in the US, are infinitely better than anything any of them have experienced thus far in their lives. More than 90% of the total number WANT to stay in the US (and most hope to find ways to do so even before they arrive). THIS factor - coupled with the intervention and council of pro-illegal, pro-union L&I and UFW (who have now provided them with T-visas and a path to citizenship in return for hyperbolic tales of exploitation) - resulted in this monumental farce in progress. What we have here is union-backed, pro-illegal forces going after a NON-union but LEGAL rival recruiter (all of these workers were issued LEGAL H-2a work visas thru US embassy in Bangkok based on official Letters of Demand from labor-strapped growers stateside). Such an indictment can only proceed in the time of Obama (note: suit against the enforcement of immig-laws/indifference to sanctuary). We've slipped into a parallel universe here in the US...