Trafficking charges are first under RICO

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — From a nondescript brick building a few blocks from the bright lights of Westport, Kansas City's oldest entertainment district, Giant Labor Solutions lured hundreds of foreigners to the city with promises of good jobs and a chance to live the American dream.

But from 2001 until this spring, Giant Labor and two other metro-area companies turned the workers into slaves, fanning them out to housekeeping jobs in hotels and other businesses in 14 states while forcing them to live, sometimes eight at a time, in small apartments for which they were charged exorbitant rent, federal authorities allege. Most of the workers were in the country illegally and were threatened with deportation.

In a 45-count indictment handed down in May, the U.S. attorney's office accuses eight Uzbekistan nationals and four others in the largest human trafficking case ever prosecuted in the city. Authorities say it is the first time a human trafficking ring has been charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, the federal statute most often associated with mafia cases.

It's also the first time the charge of fraud in foreign labor contracting has been used since it was added last year to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which in 2000 became the first comprehensive federal law for prosecution of traffickers.

G. Robert Blakey, a professor at Notre Dame Law School who helped write the RICO statute in 1970, said the law allows prosecutors to try criminal operations as a whole, rather than individually. RICO requires prosecutors to present evidence against everyone involved in a racketeering ring, instead of being limited to evidence against only that person, he said.

By presenting a bigger case, the government also has more leverage to pursue bigger forfeitures, such as the $6 million it is seeking in the Giant Labor case.

Blakey said RICO was amended in 1995 to include provisions dealing specifically with modern slavery, but he's not surprised it took 14 years for someone to use the law in a human trafficking case.

Prosecutors allege a pattern of racketeering in the Giant Labor case that included threatening victims with serious harm to themselves or others and threatening to use the legal system against them.

Blakey applauded Assistant U.S. Attorney Cynthia Cordes, the top human trafficking prosecutor in Missouri' Western District, for her efforts in pursuing the RICO charge.

"That's squarely within what Congress had intended," he said. "She's not pushing the envelope. She's right in the center of the box."