Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (16020)	11/13/2003 8:13:28 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793672

Wal-Mart raid - Part Two It appears the Honesdale arrest was just the hook that Pennsylvania INS agents were looking for to begin to carry out the Wal-Mart probe. “It was actually two separate investigations that got intertwined because they were interlinked,” a federal agent in Washington said, declining to give more details because of the ongoing probe. “They were both out of middle Pennsylvania and they just combined them into one.” The Honesdale case eventually implicated two-dozen interconnected businesses with contracts to clean more than 80 Wal-Mart stores. Investigators arrested workers from Armenia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Mongolia, Russia, and Uzbekistan employed as contract custodians in Wal-Mart stores located in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, and elsewhere. That, paired with three other cases in Florida, Illinois, and Virginia involving illegal workers employed to clean Wal-Mart pointed to a pattern of violations of labor laws and enough evidence for federal investigators to wiretap the executive offices in Arkansas. On October 24, federal agents raided Wal-Mart’s Bentonville, Ark., headquarters and stores across the country arresting 250 illegal immigrants as they came off the overnight cleaning shift. Wal-Mart received a target letter on November 4, signaling a grand jury investigation from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Williamsport, Pa., and will begin hearing in mid-December, Wal-Mart officials said. The assistant U.S. attorney handling the case, Wayne Samuelson, declined to comment beyond saying it’s an “ongoing investigation.” At the Honesdale police station, the biggest surprise is the role they played in a larger operation. “I thought it was just a coincidence that they all worked at Wal-Mart. You have to understand we’re a teeny, weenie town in the middle of nowhere. We have an active overnight population of 500. There’s nothing around but farmhouses, a little rural community,” Chief Frisk said. “But apparently that was the m.o. with these guys. They put them in little towns where nobody was getting them.” Mr. Frisk’s last encounter with Mr. Zygnerski was in February of 1999 when he found a New York license plate left behind after a hit-and-run accident. Police traced the car to Mr. Zygnerski, who said yesterday one of the immigrants was driving his car, “so I had to take the blame.” After that, Mr. Zygnerski said he sold his place. “I got rid of all these Eastern guys because they were too much of a problem,” he said.