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Ex-restaurateur gets prison time for illegal hiring
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
TOLEDO
A federal judge has sentenced the former owner of a Mexican restaurant group, which included a Youngstown eatery, to one year and one day in prison for harboring or concealing illegal immigrants and related charges.
Ramon J. Ornelas, 42, of Norwalk, Ohio, drew the sentence Monday from U.S. District Judge Jack Zouhary, who sits in Toledo.
Ornelas will be notified by the U.S. Marshal’s Service as to when and where he must report to federal prison. After prison, Ornelas will be on probation for two years.
Ornelas was the principal owner of Casa Fiesta restaurants in Youngstown, Vermilion, Ashland, Norwalk, Fremont, Oberlin, Oregon and Sandusky when the offenses occurred, the U.S. attorney said.
Ornelas sold the Youngstown restaurant at 914 E. Midlothian Blvd. in December, and the new owners have changed the eatery’s name to Casa Del Patron and have said they employ only legal workers.
The charges against Ornelas stemmed from simultaneous July 23, 2008, raids, in which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 58 undocumented Mexican nationals working at eight Ohio Casa Fiesta restaurants, including 11 workers at the one in Youngstown.
Ornelas pleaded guilty as charged in an 18-count information to eight counts of harboring or concealing illegal immigrants, three counts of mail fraud and seven counts of subscribing to a false tax return.
The U.S. attorney said that under Ornelas’ ownership, the restaurants regularly employed undocumented workers, sometimes providing them places to live, and paid them in cash without withholding taxes for the IRS.
Ornelas was charged with filing false forms that didn’t claim the undocumented workers and underreported the tax owed to the IRS.
He also was charged with mail fraud for filing false reports with the state, and those filings underreported the number of workers and the unemployment-insurance tax owed to the state.