Crime & Safety

Duvall Herb Farm Fined $1 Million For Secretly Hiring Undocumented Workers

The company had claimed it fired them, then rehired some after a federal audit.

 

A Duvall organic herb company was fined $1 million Tuesday for secretly rehiring undocumented workers and paying them in cash, after it fired them following a federal audit.

Pleading guilty Tuesday were Herbco International; President Edward Williamson Andrews III, of Seattle; Vice President David William Lykins Jr., of Lake Stevens; and general manager Debra Rae Howard, of Woodinville, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle.

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The company pleaded guilty to two felony criminal counts: harboring, concealing and shielding an alien; and encouraging and inducing an alien to reside in the U.S. Under the terms of the plea agreement, the $1 million fine is to be paid over the next five years. The company leaders pleaded guilty to misdemeanor aiding and abetting a pattern and practice of employing illegal aliens. Each person was sentenced to one year of federal probation.

In February 2011, a federal audit found that Herbco had hired more than 200 workers who used false documentation of their status in the U.S., according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. When the company was told in April 2011 that the vast majority of its employees were not legally authorized to work in the U.S., it claimed it had fired the 86 employees who were illegally employed at the time.

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"However, even as company executives were claiming to (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that the illegal employees had been dismissed, they were making arrangements to secretly rehire the most productive workers for a secret night shift,” employing as many as 25 workers, the Attorney’s Office said. "The 'A-Team,' as they called it, worked at night sorting, packaging and delivering shipments of herbs. The workers, who did not have legal status in the U.S., were paid in cash in envelopes left at the office with their names on them.  The illegal workers remained at Herbco until early June 2011. Company executives made about $40,000 in cash withdrawals from company accounts to compensate the illegal workers."

“This is a sad case,” said U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez, who imposed the sentence. “But the laws of the United States are the laws of the United States. Congress passes the laws and we must all obey.”

U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan said employers need to know there’s a “heavy price to pay” for knowingly hiring ineligible workers.

“These company executives were looking to help themselves. They knew they were breaking the law with their secret night shift, off-the-book workers and the envelopes stuffed with cash,” she said.


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