The Sopranos Meet H-1B In New Jersey

theodp writes "We smack this IT geek around a little, take him for a nice car ride, threaten to 'take care of him' if he doesn't recant his story, give him 5 G's for his trouble, and badda boom, badda bing, case dismissed. Federal prosecutors allege that an H-1B visa-holding IT employee who was owed some $53,000 in back wages was threatened in meetings at restaurants and in his home if he didn't change his story. However, the victim captured some of what happened on tape, and two employees of an Illinois-based IT staffing company — not named in the indictment but identified by the NJ Star-Ledger as ComData Consulting Inc. of Rolling Meadows, IL — are now facing extortion-related charges and a possible 20 years in prison."

Comments

Re:Unacceptable

[Anonymous Coward]

You noticed that the story is about US locals doing those thing to alien working for them, right?

Yes, the US locals Trinath Chigurupati and Sateesh Yalamanchili were the ones who did this. If the guy you replied to had bothered to read the article he would have known that!

Re:Is the recording admissible?

[Rick Zeman]

Under Illinois law, you can only audio record if all parties are made aware of the recording. If this guy was recording surreptitiously, then he might be in for some legal trouble of his own, not to mention that the recording may or may not be admissible (IANAL).

If you RTFA you'd see a) it was NJ, not Illinois and b) On Feb. 4, the two men met him again at a restaurant and offered to pay $5,000 for him to recant his story, authorities said, adding the consultant had gone to federal authorities by then and was outfitted with a hidden recorder that captured every threat.

Re:Free Market

[SteveFoerster]

Good examples, but FYI the word "née" works the other way around.

Professional Coyotes?

[beadfulthings]

This is fascinating in light of the recent lawsuit filed and won in Louisiana on behalf of a group of teachers from the Philippines who were brought here to teach and virtually held hostage by the agency that recruited them. (They won their lawsuit a few days ago--can't recall the more recent source.) Their visas were held by the recruiter as they were squeezed for ever-increasing fees, forced to rent substandard housing at exorbitant rates, and otherwise abused.

It's especially fascinating to me that in these recessionary times when recent American college graduates can't find work, we have to import elementary and high school teachers and people with the most basic IT skills so that they can be held in indentured servitude and squeezed for more and more money. I guess human trafficking is no longer limited to unskilled workers.

Re:Free Market

[Gorbag]

Even staunch libertarians don't condone fraud.

Close; also 100K+ American teens at high risk.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> Try Googling "human trafficking". I think you'll find that many undocumented immigrants live under conditions little better than slavery.

Close. Actually, I think you'll find that many undocumented immigrants live in conditions of slavery. To the extent where the only real distinction is that the law--which they don't know anyway--says that it's illegal.

You'll also find that hundreds of thousands of American teens are at high risk for being kidnapped or tricked into a life of slavery. Sources: The Polaris Project, Terry Lee Wright's River of Innocents, Victor Malarek's The Natashas.

Not that we should care whether it's an immigrant or not. And the difference in the cultures of different immigrant groups make different techniques useful in finding and prosecuting human traffickers. But it's not really an immigrant problem, so much as a human one.

Yes and no.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

> This behavior is unacceptable from companies that have offices in America. That might be how people do business in other places, but they need to leave that shit at the door.

I agree. We have to change it. But it's not just a foreign problem.

This is New Jersey. If you haven't heard a story about something like this happening in New Jersey, you haven't been listening. It's like not hearing a story about questionable behavior by waste contractors in several of the nation's major cities, or not hearing about racism on the part of law enforcement in some towns in the South. Sure, there are lots of legitimate businesspeople, and waste contractors, and helpful law enforcement officers. But the other kinds also exists and even thrives. Sure, sometimes its people bringing in their problems, but we have a lot of our own.

man!..

[tanveer1979]

you actually have no idea about the level of corruption in "developing countries". There may be lot of sh!t going at top level, but at grassroots level the level of corruption in US is not even a small % of what goes on in countries like India. I live there, so I know.
Heck, to repair my phone line I was asked for a bribe directly, ad if you want a new electricity connection, be prepared to pay big.
And guess what, in the west you have to bribe to get something "Wrong" done, in India you have to bribe for the right thing too!

Re:man!..

[Anonymous Coward]

My mum is from India and when I visited last year, I heard about the bribes she had to pay for an electric connection for the new house we build in her ancestral village.

We are still waiting for a link to the water mains (bribes included) and have not bothered with a land phone line as that includes more bribes and we mostly used mobile phones anyway.

My parents were willing to pay market rates for a couple of people to come and cut the grass in the garden there. The local workers refused, giving excuses while hoping for more pay.

My dad got pissed off enough to buy a grass cutting machine from Singapore and used it himself when he was in India with my mum for a holiday.

The very next day the labourers were willing to start cutting grass - for market rates.

The house they build is currently almost 5 years old, and yet there are still some minor carpentry work outstanding with contractors still giving excuses. This just made my dad do most of the stuff himself (him being a handy man by nature).

In the end, right now, my dad has better gear there then most of the local contractors / workers because of the shennigans they try to pull. And whenever my dad gets pissed off, guess they ain't getting work and he does it all himself.

The whole society there is corrupt - and they almost always try to squeeze out as much as they can, and as long as they think they can get away with it / are in a position of (no matter how minor) power.

Re:Let it begin

[Nadaka]

In my grandfathers day, a bagboy's salary+tips was enough to support support an adult frugally. A clerk at a corner store could expect to support a small family (essentially the same as working at a 7/11).

Now? A typical wal-mart employee working full time at minimum wage +$0.25 to $2 can pay rent on a 1 bedroom apartment, pay the electric bill and if lucky some food with nothing left for other necessities. Unless you already own a home outright or want to rent space in a crack house, you can not live on that without help. Realistically, it would take about 3 such incomes to support a family with children and that does not count the cost of child care or saving for college/retirement.