The president of a Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., furniture manufacturing business was charged Monday with criminal violations stemming from a probe by ICE ‘s Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) into allegations the company hired unauthorized alien workers.

The president and principal shareholder of Brownwood Furniture,  Rick Vartanian, is charged in a criminal action with one count of obstruction of justice and one misdemeanor count of continuing to employ unauthorized workers. Court documents from November 2009 indicate that Vartanian told ICE that unauthorized workers identified during an earlier HSI audit were no longer employed by the company, when, in fact, the company continued to employ 18 of those workers and had taken steps to shield them from detection by HSI. HSI agents executed a search warrant at the company in December 2009 and discovered the 18 unauthorized employees still working there. Vartanian, who has already agreed to pay a $10,000 fine, faces a statutory maximum sentence of 66 months in prison.

This action comes  not more than 3 weeks following previous action taken against Brownwood Furniture’s vice-president, Michael Eberly, charged in a criminal case filed Oct. 12th  with one count of continuing employment of unauthorized workers, a misdemeanor. Eberly is scheduled to make his initial court appearance Nov. 19th.  According to the charging document, Eberly knew that many of the furniture company’s workers were unauthorized and continued to employ them. Eberly, who has agreed to pay a $5,000 fine, also faces a maximum sentence up to six months in prison.

The investigation was a result of an anonymous tip  that resulted in an investigation in July 2009 where it was discovered that 61 of the firm’s 73 employees had submitted invalid documents to obtain their jobs. After HSI notified the company about the discrepancies, the executives told investigators the unauthorized workers had been terminated. However, when 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.

We refer to the ICE Press Release