Filipino American family members guilty of labor trafficking

Members of the Gamos family guilty of labor trafficking and one of their properties.

Four members of a Filipino American family who operated an adult residential company have been found guilty of labor trafficking.

The four members of the Gamos family exploited immigrant emplloyees over the course of decade from 2008 to 2018 while operating Rainbow Bright. an adult residential and child care company in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

The defendants targeted members of the Filipino community, many of whom were recent immigrants to the United States, for human trafficking and labor exploitation. The defendants trafficked many of the victims using threats of arrest and deportation, false promises to assist with immigration, and some passports were confiscated. Defendant Joshua Gamos also physically abused one of the victims.  

“Today, we held the Gamos family accountable for their despicable crimes,” California's Attorney General Bonta announced Monday, June 7.

“This organized criminal enterprise targeted vulnerable people looking for work opportunities, and exploited and abused workers in a horrific trafficking scheme. Let me be clear: This behavior will never be tolerated in California.”

Rainbow Bright employees were required to live and work in care homes and day care for hours far exceeding a normal work day, and forced to sleep on floors and in garages. Some employees reported being locked outside when defendants were not home. Rainbow Bright defendants deterred the employees from leaving the dismal working conditions by regularly threatening to turn the employees over to U.S. immigration officials and by confiscating some employees’ passports.

The jury found that the defendants made over $500,000 through their scheme; the victims were vulnerable; and that defendants acted with intent to cause great bodily injury and with cruelty, viciousness, and callousness.

Each of the following defendants were found guilty:

• Joshua Gamos, 46, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit human trafficking and grand theft of labor, one count of human trafficking, 16 counts of grand theft of labor, one count of workers’ compensation fraud, nine counts of failure to file unemployment tax returns, and nine counts of failure to collect or pay unemployment insurance taxes;
• Noel Gamos, 44, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit human trafficking and grand theft of labor, one count of human trafficking, 16 counts of grand theft of labor, nine counts of failure to file unemployment insurance tax returns and nine counts of failure to collect or pay unemployment insurance taxes; and
• Carlina Gamos, 70, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit human trafficking and grand theft of labor, two counts of human trafficking, 17 counts of grand theft of labor, nine counts of failure to file unemployment insurance tax returns, and nine counts of failure to collect or pay unemployment insurance taxes.

Gerlen Gamos, 42, previously pleaded guilty on January 30, 2019, to two counts of grand theft.

Sentencing for these defendants is scheduled for August 19 at 8:30 AM at San Mateo County Superior Court.

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Lawsuit claims Filipino workers came to US for an internship, instead they were exploited

Workers say that prestigious hotel lured them

A lawsuit filed Tuesday (June 25) accuses the luxury Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City of exploiting workers from the Philippines.

Instead of a program that promised training and cultural immersion, the lawsuit accuses the hotel of forcing the Filipinos to work long hours doing menial jobs for low pay.

The four plaintiffs — Jann Descanzo, Veronica Bondoc, Glen Segundino and Marianne Ponio — studied tourism in the Philippines and came to learn about the hospitality industry in the United States. Attorneys for the plaintiffs suspect scores of others to join the class action lawsuit.

The hotel allegedly misused a type of visa similar to an internship program and instead treated participants like normal workers to avoid travel costs and other fees, according to the lawsuit filed by four workers represented by the Asian Americans Advancing Justice and other organizations.

"This conduct is a blatant, greed-driven and illegal perversion of this country's immigration laws," David Seligman, executive director of Towards Justice, a Denver-based nonprofit law firm helping with the lawsuit, said in a news release.

Grand America officials didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

The Grand America Hotel opened a year before the 2002 Winter Olympics and is considered one of the most lavish in Utah. Past presidents have stayed in the hotel that often hosts major political gatherings and important conferences.

The hotel is the flagship of the Grand Hotel and Resorts company, which also owns four Little America hotels in Western states.

The J-1 visa program is intended to give foreign workers who can be scholars, teachers, camp counselors and au pairs training and experience in those fields in the United States.

The lawsuit claims the hotel didn't make good on promises of providing supervised training about aspects of the American hospitality industry.

The workers say they were forced to put in 60-hour weeks. Their supervisors were accused of making racist comments and the Filipinos were threatened with deportation when they complained about the hotel not following the promise offered by the internship program.

They each paid their travel costs and recruitment fees of more than $3,000 each, the lawsuit says.

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Chinese developer pays $250,000 to labor trafficking victims

The Silvery Towers project was using unpaid immigrant workers, says the Department of Labor.

TWENTY-TWO IMMIGRANTS were forced to work without pay and were held in captivity until they were freed last August, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Full Power Properties LLC – the Chinese developer for the 650-unit, high-rise Silvery Towers project in San Jose, California – has paid $250,000 to 22 employees to resolve violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) found during a U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division (WHD) investigation.

WHD investigators determined that Full Power Properties LLC benefited from the work done by employees supplied by Job Torres, an unlicensed subcontractor doing business as Nobilis Construction.

Investigators found a number of the employees forced to work without pay on large Bay Area construction projects, including the Silvery Towers development. When not working, they lived in captivity in squalid conditions in a warehouse controlled by Torres.

On Aug. 29, last year, more than a dozen immigrant workers who were being held in captivity in a Hayward home were freed by federal agents. Federal prosecutors and Hayward police alleged then that Job Torres Hernandez forced the workers there and at other construction projects around the Bay Area to work without pay. He was indicted on charges of harboring illegal immigrants for commercial advantage or private financial gain.

"The U.S. Department of Labor will do everything in its power to stop employers who violate the law from gaining an unfair competitive advantage over those who play by the rules," said Wage and Hour Division District Director Susana Blanco, in San Francisco. "This case also represents a major victory in the fight against the scourge of human-trafficking."     

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Modern day sweat shops prey on aspiring tech workers from India

By Louis Chan
ASAM NEWS

WHEN YOU HEAR the words body shop, you likely think of workers in overalls restoring your car to its original physical condition.

For thousands of mostly Indian workers, body shops may be the equivalent of the modern day sweatshop. They are employers who may be taking advantage of desperate immigrants looking for a way to stay in the United States.

An article by Nikhil Swaminathan in Mother Jones details how many body shops exploit these workers and how a little known federal program may be the enabler, along with universities raking in big bucks by attracting foreign students on the hope the program can lead to a job in the United States.

A federal guest worker program called OPT or Optional Practical Training is attracting literally tens of thousands of Indian students to the United States. At the University of Central Missouri, the Indian international student population exploded from 152 in 2012 to 2500 in 2015. That’s 17 percent of the school’s student body.

According to Mother Jone’s, OPT allows foreign students who earn degrees to work in their field for a year after graduation. You can stay up to three years if you majored in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. That’s as long as the much harder to get H1B visa. There are now 300,000 OPTs in the US.

“One student I spoke to, who appears in my Mother Jones piece, said that people back in India think of someone who lives in America as “a god,” said reporter Swaminathan to AsAmNews. “Also, for some Indian parents, I think there’s a sense that sending their kids to the U.S. is a sort of retirement plan for them. If the kids come here and earn in dollars, they can send enough money home for the parents to live comfortably into old age. Or they can even send for them to come live in the States with them once they’re set up. I also heard that men who work in the U.S. get higher dowries when they look to marry.”

The OPT program may be working for students who go to better known schools with good reputations, but those at lesser known schools often find themselves struggling with little prospect of getting jobs at top tech firms such as Google, Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Amazon. Once shut out of that job market, these students find themselves targets of body shops.

One student talked about his experience on You Tube.

Body shops can pay $50,000, slightly higher than an internship at a top tech firm, according to Swaminathan.

“As I detail in the story, going the body-shop route often means lying on your resume, having other people take technical interviews for you, signing restrictive employment contracts, and basically involving yourself in a host of unethical practices,” said Swaminathan. “It’s a real-life catch-22 for prospective immigrants desperate to stay in America.”

Several body shops have been coached to lie to the government about their work to obtain H1B visas. Some companies have also been accused of failing to pay their workers. There are no regulations that require universities to vet the employers they allow to recruit on their campuses.

“These institutions that are just spewing out these degrees aren’t making any attempt to give them a career path,” said Prathiba Kalyan, a recruiter who spoke to Mother Jones.

Students for the most part are left feeling vulnerable and to fend for themselves.

“Students who get involved with body shops are scared — both because they think they have to do whatever their employer says to keep their immigration status (not to mention make money) and because, for those who join body shops, they eventually figure out they’re complicit in a sketchy situation,” said Swaminathan.

“Until the government can figure out how to incentivize these kids to come forward — and that might mean offering amnesty to OPT students who have participated in unethical behavior — this problem could conceivably continue.”

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$4.2 million fine ordered for oil rig accident that killed Filipino workers

The Gulf of Mexico oil rig after the explosion that killed three Filipno workers.

ALMOST FIVE YEARS after an oil rig accident blew up claiming the lives of three Filipino workers, after pleading guilty to several safety violations, an oil drilling operation agreed to pay a $4.2 million penalty.

The decision is part of a series of court proceedings surrounding the 2012 the Gulf of Mexico accident, south of New Orleans. Filipino workers Avelino Tajonera, Elroy Corporal, and Jerome Malagapo died in the explosion while other workers were burned and injured.


Black Elk Energy Offshore Operations LLC (BEE), headquartered in Houston, Texas, was sentenced today (Aug. 31) on eight felony violations of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) and one misdemeanor count of violating the Clean Water Act before the Honorable U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo.

However, BEE has filed for bankruptcy since the accident, therefore the $4.2 million penalty will be a general unsecured claim against BEE’s bankruptcy estate entitled to a pro rata distribution from the trust with other allowed unsecured claims against BEE

The workers who died or were injured were employed by labor contractor Grand Isle Shipywards. 

Grand Isle Shipyards faces manslaughter charges, while co-defendants Curtis Dantin, Christopher Srubar, and Don Moss face criminal violations of the Clean Water Act in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Those cases probably won't be heard until 2018.

The OCSLA charges against Grand Isle Shipyards, Moss, Srubar, and Dantin, were dismissed by the district court and are pending in an interlocutory appeal by the government to the Fifth Circuit.

The oil accident lifted the curtains to labor exploitation in the oil industry. Among the many illegal abuses the Filipino workers suffered at the hands of GIS were being forced to work for six to seven days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day without overtime pay with thousands of dollars in overpriced, unlawful “room and board” deductions unlawfully withheld from their paychecks. 

GIS forced the Filipino employees to work for up to four months straight offshore on oil rigs, while American co-workers were allowed to leave the oil rigs after the completion of their shifts each day. 

The Filipino workers were threatened with firing or being deported if they requested a day off or complained about working conditions. 

Onshore, Filipino workers were locked in bunkhouses at night and even on their days off, held prisoner until the beginning of their next shift. Now, over 100 Filipino workers in Louisiana have filed a class action lawsuit against GIS. They are also seeking accountability from a Philippine recruitment group in Louisiana called D&R Resources as well as a crewing company in the Philippines called DNR Offshore Crewing, which works with GIS to recruit Filipino workers.

The U.S. Department of the Interior-Office of Inspector General and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-CID conducted the investigations. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Emily Greenfield and Nicholas Moses, and Senior Trial Attorney Kenneth Nelson of the Environment and Natural Resources Division prosecuted the case.
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