Six indicted in huge US scheme | Bangkok Post: news

Six recruiters have been accused of luring 400 Thai labourers to the United States and forcing them to work, according to a federal indictment that the FBI has called the largest ever human-trafficking case in US history.

The indictment alleges that four employees of labour recruitment firm Global Horizons Manpower Inc. and two Thailand-based recruiters orchestrated the scheme. It states the recruiters lured the workers to the US with false promises of lucrative jobs, then confiscated their passports, failed to honour their employment contracts and threatened to deport them.

Once the labourers arrived in the US starting in May 2004, they were put to work and have since been sent to farms in states including Hawaii, Washington, California, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, according to attorneys and advocates.