2 sentenced for role in forced-labor scheme at Ohio egg farms

WASHINGTON — Conrado Salgado Soto, 53, of Mexico, was sentenced to 51 months in prison today in the Northern District of Ohio for his role in luring Guatemalan minors and adults into the United States on false pretenses, then using threats of physical harm to compel their labor at egg farms in Ohio.

The announcement was made by Vanita Gupta, principal deputy assistant attorney general, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division; Carol S. Rendon, acting U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Ohio; and Stephen D. Anthony, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Cleveland Division.

Salgado Soto pleaded guilty to the labor-trafficking conspiracy in August 2015.

According to the indictment, which was unsealed on July 2, 2015, members of the labor-trafficking conspiracy recruited workers from Guatemala, some as young as 14 or 15 years old, falsely promising them good jobs and a chance to attend school in the United States.

Salgado’s co-conspirators then smuggled and transported the workers to a trailer park in Marion, Ohio, where he and his co-conspirators ordered them to live in dilapidated trailers and to work at physically demanding jobs at Trillium Farms for up to 12 hours a day for minimal amounts of money. The work included cleaning chicken coops, loading and unloading crates of chickens, de-beaking chickens and vaccinating chickens. Eight minors and two adults were identified in the indictment as victims of the forced-labor scheme.

Another co-defendant, Pablo Duran Jr., was sentenced today to 14 months in prison for alien harboring. Duran pleaded guilty in December 2015.