Here is more from U.S. Attorney Sullivan’s indictment as stated in his press release:
the defendants assisted certain illegal alien employees in obtaining fraudulent identification documents; the defendants, by
hiring and paying illegal aliens with knowledge of, or with reckless disregard of, their status,
encouraged and induced illegal aliens to unlawfully reside in the United States to work at MBI;and certain defendants knowingly filed and caused to be filed, W-2 tax forms with the Social Security Administration containing false identity information.
If true, that is certainly criminal behavior, and placed many innocent people at risk.
According to U.S. Attorney Sullivan’s office, the potential punishments include:
If convicted, INSOLIA, COSTA and MELO each face a maximum sentence of 10 years
in prison, a $250,000 fine, a $100 special assessment, and at least two years of supervised release on the charge of conspiring to harbor illegal aliens; and 6 months in prison, a $100 special assessment, and $10,000 fine for each illegal alien hired by MBI on the conspiracy to hire illegal aliens charge.
However, remember one thing, which even the US Attorney’s press release contains in small print, at the very end:
The details contained in the indictment are allegations. The defendant is presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.
Maybe Lincoln said it best, or was it Mark Twain – I am sure one of you knows:
“You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
fools and their brains are soon parted, if indeed they ever have met. or sumpin like that.
See URL: http://www.southcoas…
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It is legit, all right. I noted the Press Release from US Attorney Sullivan this evening in State House News and broke the story here.
…let me ask you this. There were a number of ICE raids in midwest meat packing plants shortly after the Nov. 2006 elections. Have any of those raids led to indictments? If not, why not? Have the feds even looked for evidence of infractions by employers in those cases?
I have not been following those closely, and am not aware that the owners of those plants, which were large corporations, assisted in the creation of fraudulent documents as is alleged to be the case for Insolio/Michael Bianco & accomplices.
Maybe now Michael Sullivan can start investigating the day laborer crisis as reported in the Globe today.
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It’s time to send these illegal immigrants home and the people who employ them to jail.
I read that article and what was described doesn’t sound like a crisis to me. It sounds more like the labor economy working according to the basic principles of economics. In fact, I thought it was interesting to see how the young AFRICAN-AMERICAN man was learning how to bargain for better wages from the immigrants at the site.
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Americans would certainly be in a crisis if all of the undocumented simply disappeared. You obviously have no idea who picks your produce, who washes the dishes and cooks the food in the restaurants you frequent, who cleans the hospitals, nursing homes, and day cares in our cities, or who sews together the clothing you buy. If you live in East Boston, chances are your home was built by undocumented immigrant labor. Have you hired a contractor to perform any home improvement in your house lately? Guess who was actually doing the job? And if you think they were Irish – guess what? Lots of them are undocumented as well.
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I personally would prefer that Michael Sullivan focus his efforts on those employers that exploit their workers – like the employer described in the article as owed his worker over $3000.
I’m worried about the tax evasion. It’s the responsibility of the employer to make sure taxes are being paid, processing the forms, etc. When employers don’t do that, they’re stealing from taxpayers, period.
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So, I do think that employers hiring day laborers should go to jail. Should we export the labor? That’s not so clear to me.
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Why isn’t the IRS cracking down? Do they not have the enforcement ability? Why not team up with other agencies?
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The issue for me is lost tax revenue. The labor abuse is a real problem, but one that goes away if the employees are on the books. The contributions to local, state, and federal tax coffers — as well as medicare, social security, and unemployment — are missed.
…independent contractors. Independent contractors are responsible for paying their own taxes on income (which I suspect you are referring to) and those who engage day laborers are not responsible.
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Not now at least. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the tax code could be amended to require those who engage day laborers to withhold a minimum percentage of income and remit it to the IRS (“withholding”). As far as I know, the code hasn’t been changed to require that.
But, it seems to be a stretch, given that they’re paid by the hour for manual labor. What happens with more traditional “temp” employees? I don’t know if that example applies though, since they typically have an employer who is hired [as in an independent contractor (?!) by the company needing labor… the temp company makes money, and then they pay their temps hourly. I think.
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I have no idea what the rules are on withholding on independent contractors.
There is, for example, no with holding on the payments made to bar advocates, just as there is no paid sick time, no paid vacation time, etc. Bar advocates are legal day laborers, essentially.
The determination of independent contractor status is determined by the amount of autonomy an individual has in the course of the work that he/she does. Given that most day laborers are told exactly what to do, where to do it, and how and are supervised fairly closely, it is unlikely that he/she would be considered an independent contractor. I might be wrong, but I imagine that bar advocates have some discretion in choosing which cases to take and how to argue the case.
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The only situation that I can think that might meet this criteria would be if an individual hired a couple of guys, gave them general instructions on what they want done, gave them the money to do it and left them alone. It can happen, but most day laborers are doing construction, lawn maintenance, and general labor. This kind of work does not lend itself well to the IRS’ definition of independent contractor.
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Tax evasion is a real issue. I wonder if anyone knows how much estimated tax revenue is lost via the paid-in-cash day laborer versus the many corporate tax shelters.