Posted on 01/01/2025 8:49:24 AM PST by DFG
Company Agreed to Pay $3.7M Penalty for Aggravated Identity Theft and Obstruction Offenses Committed by Hiring Manager
Fresh Mark, Inc, has entered into a Non-prosecution Agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio in connection with its hiring manager’s involvement in an identity theft scheme and subsequent obstruction of justice. The company was founded in 1920 and is a nationwide producer of processed meats under the Sugardale and Superior Brand Meats brands, along with several private labels. Between 2013 and 2018, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents arrested multiple Fresh Mark employees who used stolen identities to gain employment with the company.
According to court documents, a hiring manager at Fresh Mark’s Salem facility, Yelwin Omar Munoz-Solis, 43, of Salem, Ohio, conspired with others to steal identities of U.S. Citizens and give them to job applicants at Fresh Mark’s meat processing plants. He then certified I-9 documents, which are used to verify identity and employment eligibility in the United States. Munoz-Solis was charged and subsequently plead guilty to conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft, aggravated identity theft, and making false statements on immigration forms submitted to HSI.
HSI served search warrants at Fresh Mark’s processing facilities in Salem, Massillon, and Canton on June 19, 2018, where investigators detained 146 aliens working at the facility who were in the United States without legal status. Approximately 30 of those individuals were later charged with various immigration violations in federal court.
“Stealing identities to transfer to others not eligible to work is not an acceptable business practice,” said U.S. Attorney Rebecca Lutzko for the Northern District of Ohio. “Employers must ensure that their hiring practices comply with all federal laws, and businesses caught providing false statements to the government will be held to account.”
(Excerpt) Read more at justice.gov ...
I have been a victim of employment identity theft. These companies should be sued into bankruptcy. It has totally frigged up my tax and financial life.
They should be crushed and put out of business and jailed!
Regardless of fines, the identity theft crimes are prison felonies, how does business commit all these crimes like Wells Fargo, and yet no one goes to jail.
How did you find out and what can one do to clear this mess up?
did they get um registered to vote using the stolen identities, too?
Well. I wonder what motivated him to break the law? /s
Screw that!
Is this a food processing plant owned by the Chinese?
And the reason not to prosecute?
You can’t put a million dollars in jail.
I found out when the IRS wanted me to pay taxes on the income as they had claimed some ridiculous number of exemptions on the W2 to keep the witholding low.
Since I had been pregnant and given birth several states away for the time period in question, I simply provided my child’s birth certificate to show that I couldn’t possibly have been a man washing dishes in San Francisco.
They dropped the matter immediately.
You have to establish a PIN with the IRS so when you file your taxes the PIN will protect from any other filings. You still have to file affidavits when the IRS says you had so many W2/W4/1099 forms filed. But once your identity has been established as stolen then the IRS will believe the affidavits and waive any claims then contact the company that filed them with the IRS. You also must freeze your Expeirean, Equifax, Trans Union and Chexsystems credit reports. The freeze are now easy to handle with computers these days. It was a big hassle when I first dealt with it 35 years ago. At that time ID theft was very rare compared to today.
More government bribe? Payoff instead of prosecution?
They dropped the matter immediately.
Thank goodness for it happening several states away. The pregnant man washing dishes part probably would not have helped in the new D.E. I. environment in the federal government.
Bet it was a quarterly fixed budget incentive. These are a problem and this is why. Districts/Plants receive a fixed quarterly budget. The head manager gets to keep any money saved as a personal bonus to himself. So these are the things that the practice creates.
The Biden DOJ clearing any criminal charges against all their partners in crime before Trump and his team takes office.
Do the victims get any say-so in this non-prosecution agreement? Do they get recompensed for the damage to their financial status and credit?
One thing on which we need transparency is who receives the “fines” when the federal government settles with these groups or corporations.
bookmark
Well, this was back in the nineties before pregnant men were a thing.
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