Three US men pleaded guilty to luring 600 Thai farm workers to US farms and exploiting their labor in a case the Justice Department described as the largest human trafficking case in US
Bruce Schwartz, 53, Sam Wongsesanit, 40, and Shane Germann, 42, pleaded guilty to human trafficking violations, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
The Thai nationals were brought into the United States
The workers were sent to farms in Hawaii and Washington
The three men "conspired to coerce the agricultural labor and services of the Thai nationals" by tricking the recruits into incurring debts secured by the workers' homes and family land in Thailand, then confiscating their passports once in the United States.
The traffickers threatened to send the victims back home where they would face "destitution, homelessness and other serious harm if they did not remain in the defendants' service for meager earnings," the Justice Department said.
The three men "pleaded guilty to participating in the largest human trafficking scheme ever seen by the Department of Justice," said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department's Civil Rights division.
Schwartz pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit forced labor, and Germann and Wongsesanit pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit document servitude.
Law enforcement officials from several US states, including Hawaii , California and New York
Schwartz, Wongsesanit and Germann each face maximum sentences of five years in prison, while a fourth person in the case, Podjanee Sinchai, was charged and convicted in Thailand with recruitment fraud and sentenced to four years in prison, the statement read.
- By Agence France-Presse
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