CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Florida business owner sentenced for exploiting Mexican farmworkers

Farm workers pick strawberries in Marina, California on Tuesday, April 28, 2020. Bladimir Moreno was sentenced to 118 months in prison on racketeering and forced-labor conspiracy charges. 

File Photo by Terry Schmitt/UPI | License Photo

Dec. 30 (UPI) -- The owner of a Florida-based farmworker company has been sentenced to 118 months in prison on racketeering and forced-labor conspiracy charges.

U.S. District Court Judge Charlene Edward Honeywell of the Middle District of Florida sentenced Bladimir Moreno, 55, Thursday and ordered him to pay more than $175,000 in restitution to the victims, all of whom were Mexican H-2A agricultural workers between 2015 and 2017.

According to court documents, Moreno owned and operated Los Villatoros Harvesting, a farm-labor contracting company that employed Mexican workers on H-2A agricultural visas. Authorities say that once the farmworkers arrived in the United States, Moreno used false promises and coercion to compel the workers to labor under harsh conditions in Florida, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina.

Authorities say Moreno and his co-conspirators coerced H-2A agricultural workers by imposing debts on them, confiscating their passports and keeping them in the United States after their visas had expired. He also forced workers into "crowded, unsanitary and degrading living conditions" and threatened workers with arrest and deportation if they didn't meet his demands.

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Federal investigators say Moreno also gave investigators fraudulent worker records during their probe of operations at Los Villatoros Harvesting.

"This defendant abused his power as a business owner to capitalize on the victims' vulnerabilities and immigration status, luring those seeking a better quality of life with false promises of lawful work paying a fair wage," said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. "The defendant forced Mexican agricultural workers to labor under inhumane conditions, confiscated their passports, imposed exorbitant fees and debts, and threatened them with deportation or false arrest."

Justice Department officials charged Moreno in 2021, and he pleaded guilty earlier this year to conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as conspiracy to commit forced labor. Two of his co-defendants previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy under the RICO Act and previously were sentenced in October. Christina Gamez, a U.S. citizen who worked for Los Villatoros Harvesting as a bookkeeper and supervisor, was sentenced to 37 months in prison. Guadalupe Mendes Mendoza, 45, pleaded guilty to conspiring to obstruct a federal investigation and was sentenced to eight months of home detention and a $5,500 fine.

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The Palm Beach County, Fla., Human Trafficking Task Force and the county's Sheriff's Office investigated the case with help from multiple Department of Labor investigators and worker-rights organizations. The Florida-based Coalition of Immokalee Workers said it assisted federal investigators after two workers escaped from their employers' control by hiding in the trunk of a car and escaping to seek help.

"Forcing individuals to work against their will using abusive and coercive tactics is not only unconscionable but illegal," said U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg for the Middle District of Florida. "We will continue to work with our task force partners to combat human trafficking in all its forms, including prosecuting those who exploit vulnerable workers."

Anyone with information about human trafficking can report it to the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.