A Central Coast man is headed to prison after prosecutors say he admitted to illegally charging farmworkers for temporary work visas.
The H-2A Visa program allows the temporary hiring of foreign workers when there isn’t enough domestic help available. Labor contractors can recruit workers, but they can’t charge them for the visa, equipment, transportation, or housing.
Federal prosecutors say Jorge Vasquez and his team fraudulently recruited more than 160 workers under the visa program. They say the farmworkers were charged $ 5,000 to $ 15,000 for their visas. Investigators say the workers were also paid about $3.00 less an hour than what Vasquez reported to the government.
He pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud. The Santa Maria man was sentenced to a year in federal prison and ordered to pay more than $160,000 in restitution.
