Mex restaurant owner, mgrs and empls picked up in sweep of immigrant smuggling oper.

energy_wave

energy_wave

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Somehow, I think this guy is going to be forfeiting everything he owns in America.:whistle:

Mexican restaurant owner, managers and employees picked up in sweep of immigrant smuggling operation

By Michael Beebe
Updated: 04/16/08 1:40 PM

Agents with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency remove boxes containing evidence, during a raid at El Caporal restaurant at 3601 Union Road in Cheektowaga.

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Immigration agents and local law enforcement in five states today arrested the Depew owner of seven Mexican restaurants, 11 restaurant managers and 45 illegal aliens in a scheme that authorities said involved smuggling workers from Mexico to work for low wages in the restaurants.

Simon Bandes, a Mexican who came to this country illegally and has passed himself off as a Honduran, authorities said, was accused of being the ringleader after his arrest at 6 a.m. at the Lancer Court Apartments in Depew.

Bandes recruited workers in Mexico and paid $2,000 to smuggle them into this country to work at his restaurants, said U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn and Lev Kubiak, acting agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Buffalo.

The restaurant employees were made to work long hours at low wages in Bandes' restaurants to pay off the smuggling fee, Flynn said, giving Bandes' restaurants a competitive advantage over his rival restaurants.

Bandes also rented apartments to his workers, authorities charged, and took rent payments out of their wages.

The investigation began two years ago after Cheektowaga police came to the federal agency with information on Bandes, who was using the name Jorge DeLarco, and his El Caporal Mexican Restaurant at 3601 Union Road, Flynn said.

Bandes also owns Mexican restaurants in Dunkirk, the Azteca Mexican Food Cantina, and in Allegany, the Don Lorenzo Mexican Restaurant.

Those establishments were raided today, as were Bandes' restaurants in Bradford, Pa., Mentor, Ohio, and Wheeling, W.Va. Agents also raided apartment houses where the illegal aliens lived and the Marietta, Ga. home of Bandes' sister.

Arraignments were scheduled for this afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh Scott

http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/324636.html?imw=Y
 
mbabulldog

mbabulldog

Inactive
dimensiondancer said:
How do they get a business license when the are illegal?????

Maybe I just don't understand the law...
Click to expand...


Don't know how it works in this particular municipality, but the businesses I opened in New York were opened with licenses that were more geared towards collecting a fee than verifying I was a citizen. In fact, I don't recall being required to show any documentation attesting to that fact.
 
O

OddOne

< Yes, I do look like that.
dimensiondancer said:
How do they get a business license when the are illegal?????

Maybe I just don't understand the law...
Click to expand...

The owner's likely a naturalized citizen born in Mexico or born in the U.S. as an anchor baby. That would allow the legal formation of businesses, etc. and make him a perfect coyote or willing party to a coyote ring.

Besides, what DD said. Most munis only care about whether you have the $ for the license fees, not where you're from and whether you should be on this side of the fence.



A local place where I am got INSsed a couple months ago. When it reopened the owner was the same but almost everyone in the place is not Mexican, where before they were almost all Mexican. (Okay, mostly Mexican and a few were Honduran and Guatemalan. Live in south Florida and south Texas for a while and you can almost name the region a Hispanic person is from based on their body structure and the dialect of Spanish they speak.) In fact, my waitress last time I was there was Ukranian. :D

oO
 
dimensiondancer

dimensiondancer

Inactive
OddOne said:
The owner's likely a naturalized citizen born in Mexico or born in the U.S. as an anchor baby. That would allow the legal formation of businesses, etc. and make him a perfect coyote or willing party to a coyote ring.

Besides, what DD said. Most munis only care about whether you have the $ for the license fees, not where you're from and whether you should be on this side of the fence.



oO
Click to expand...

I did not know that.

And maybe that is one thing they need to think about changing. (AKA Change!)

Letting anyone who is living in this country illegally own a business is preposterious.
 
energy_wave

energy_wave

Has No Life - Lives on TB
The owner is a Mexican who used the ID from a dead Honduras man. He is the owner of all those restaurants. He smuggled in his relatives, who are all illegals to help run them. The relatives spread into the other towns and states to set up and work at the other places of business. Some of which are on reservations where cigarettes are sold and gambling takes place, which makes me suspect there will be more unfolding from this sweep. Imo, there will be charges of moving cigarettes, etc out of the reservations to subvert the sales taxes.

This is as crooked as it gets people. His way of doing business under cuts all the other similar business that obey the laws of the land, pay prevailing living wages, state taxes, etc.

I really think he and his family will be sent packing after they forfeit everything they have gained from working under the law.

There seems to be a huge network he supports and if this group operates the way I suspect they do, drugs will also be involved.

What gets me is the way he takes advantage of his own people. By paying them $300.00 for a 70 hour week, skimming funds, renting them places to stay, like the old coal mines did years ago, etc. Fkng SCUM!!
 
vessie

vessie

Has No Life - Lives on TB
I think your right Army Girl.

When I used to travel down to Zihuatinejo to see my sister, we used to all go downtown to a very nice restaurant called Coconuts and one of the waiters there said that half the year he'd cross the border illegally and work for some friends of his who owned (still own?) a very trendy restaurant down at the Pike Street Market in Seattle ( it's not a mexican restaurant). And my friends who were with me in Mexico would see him there at the Seattle restaurant. V
 
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