Fort Pierce Company Guilty in Scheme to Hire Undocumented Workers
Originally Published by: CBS 12 News — October 28, 2024
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A Fort Pierce business as well as one of its employees admitted to creating fake companies to hire undocumented workers and avoid the IRS.
Fort Pierce limited liability company East Coast Truss (ECT) pled guilty in a Fort Pierce federal court to conspiring to harbor aliens using false employment. (Getty images)
The U.S. Attorney's Office states that law enforcement executed a search warrant on Aug. 6, 2021, at East Coast Truss's (ECT) headquarters in St. Lucie County, where they found 28 of the 58 employees present to be unauthorized to work in the United States.
ECT pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to harbor aliens by means of employment. According to a release from the Department of Justice (DOJ), on Aug. 29, Kelly Yanira Del Valle pled guilty to the same charges on Aug. 29, along with filing false tax returns and aiding the filing of false tax returns.
Both ECT and Del Valle agreed to a forfeiture adjustment of $450,000 for ECT and $100,000 for Del Valle, along with restitution to the IRS of $100,146.
Plea documents filed with the court stated that ECT and Del Vale admitted that multiple ECT officers and employees, including Del Valle, conspired to harbor the employees who were in the country illegally from June 1, 2018, through Aug. 6, 2021.
The DOJ found that in June of 2018, Del Valle along with the ECT's president, a managing member, and an officer manager met at ECT headquarters and agreed to "transfer" the workers employed with ECT to Hollys Services, a company created by Del Valle to evade authorities and keep the employees off ECT's payroll.
Del Valle would receive a fee from ECT for each person on Hollys Services' payroll who worked at ECT. Del Valle also agreed to recruit others to work for ECT who were not authorized to under the guise of Hollys Services, and later another account under the name Quality Control.
According to a DOJ release, the scheme was created as a workaround after an Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 audit conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in May 2018 identified dozens of ECT employees who were not authorized to work in the United States.
Throughout the conspiracy, ECT transferred over $1.15 million to a bank account set up by Del Valle under the name Hollys Services and $2.2 million to another Del Valle bank account under the name Quality Control.
Del Valle could be sentenced to up to 16 years in federal prison for her charges, and ECT faces up to five years of probation, and a maximum fine of $500,000, or twice the gross loss or gain caused by the scheme, whichever sum is larger.