Six recruiters have been accused of luring 400 Thai labourers to the United States and forcing them to work, according to a federal indictment that the FBI has called the largest ever human-trafficking case in US history.

The indictment alleges that four employees of labour recruitment firm Global Horizons Manpower Inc. and two Thailand-based recruiters orchestrated the scheme. It states the recruiters lured the workers to the US with false promises of lucrative jobs, then confiscated their passports, failed to honour their employment contracts and threatened to deport them.

Once the labourers arrived in the US starting in May 2004, they were put to work and have since been sent to farms in states including Hawaii, Washington, California, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, according to attorneys and advocates.

Many labourers were initially taken to farms in Hawaii and Washington, where working conditions were the worst, said Chancee Martorell, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Thai Community Development Centre, which represents the 263 Thai workers who were brought to the US by Global Horizons.

The indictment said:

"The object of the conspiracy was to obtain cheap, compliant labour, indebted by the defendants' recruitment fees, and to compel the workers' labour and service through threats to have the workers arrested, deported, or sent back to Thailand."

The workers were in the United States under the federal H2-A visa programme, which places foreign workers on US farms. The case was investigated by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the FBI in Honolulu, where many of the guest workers wound up.

The six defendants include Global Horizons president and CEO Mordechai Orian, 45, of Beverly Hills; director of international relations Pranee Tubchumpol, 44; Hawaii regional supervisor Shane Germann, 41; and onsite field supervisor Sam Wongsesanit, 39. The Thailand recruiters were identified as Ratawan Chunharutai and Podjanee Sinchai.

If convicted, Mr Orian and Ms Tubchumpol each face maximum sentences of 70 years in prison, Mr Ratawan faces a maximum sentence of 65 years in prison, Mr Germann and Mr Wongsesanit each face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and Ms Podjanee, who was recently charged in Thailand with multiple counts of recruitment fraud, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Two were arrested on Thursday morning in Los Angeles and Fargo, North Dakota, said FBI special agent Tom Simon. 

Another Global Horizons employee was expected to turn himself in, and the US will work with the Thai government to apprehend the remaining two suspects.

The indictment also alleges that the defendants confined Thai workers at Maui Pineapple Farm and demanded an additional fee of US$3,750 (116,868 baht) from them to keep their jobs with Global Horizons.

From the Bangkok Post

Sounds like modern slavery with out the credit debt ,what bastards !