The owner of a Southern California furniture manufacturing company, Brownwood Furniture located in Rancho Cucamonga, has been sentenced to 10 months in federal prison for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants and six months for continuing to employ illegal aliens.  The sentences will be served concurrently.  In addition to the prison terms, he was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine.

Prosecutors say 57-year-old Brownwood Furniture owner Rick Vartanian was told earlier that 61 of his 73 workers at the facility were illegal immigrants and had submitted invalid documents to obtain their jobs.  In November 2009, Vartanian told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that the illegal immigrants no longer worked for Brownwood Furniture, but investigators discovered 18 illegal immigrants were still working for him.  Vartanian, who was convicted of obstruction of justice and employing illegal immigrants, was sentenced Monday by a Los Angeles federal judge.

Brownwood Furniture vice president Michael Patrick Eberly pleaded guilty to employing illegal immigrants and he was placed on a years’ probation and fined $10,000.

The charges against the defendants stem from an investigation that began after ICE HSI received an anonymous tip that Brownwood furniture was using unauthorized labor. An audit of the company’s hiring records in July 2009 revealed that 61 of the firm’s 73 employees had submitted invalid documents to obtain their jobs. After ICE HSI notified the company about the discrepancies, the executives told investigators the unauthorized workers had been terminated. However, when ICE HSI agents executed a search warrant at the business in Dec. 2009, they encountered 30 unauthorized workers, 18 of whom had purportedly been terminated following the July audit.

These sentences make very clear that employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers, face seriously dire consequences.

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