Kansas, Missouri restaurant managers indicted on federal labor violations, racketeering
A federal indictment charges 19 restaurant owners and managers, including eight in Kansas and Missouri, with a racketeering conspiracy, alleging they knowingly hired and maintained employment of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.
The indictment, unsealed in the Western District of Missouri on Wednesday, involves 45 Mexican restaurants across several states that received employment services from Specialty Foods Distribution, a Joplin-based company, and another affiliate. Over the course of nearly 20 years, the company helped staff the restaurants with people not eligible to work in the U.S., the indictment alleges.
The investigation began with a Kansas Department of Labor inquiry about employment practices at Bravos Mexican Grill, an Overland Park restaurant, according to the indictment. Federal inspectors discovered several employees were undocumented workers.
The indictment names Jose Louis Bravo, of Oklahoma, owner of Specialty Foods Distribution, as the leader of the operation.
Bravo is accused alongside co-conspirators of providing a workforce supply to provide fake documents for employees and sending that information to state and federal agencies. He also is accused of helping to arrange the smuggling of immigrants across the U.S. border to work in restaurants he owned a stake in.
Felony charges against the group include document fraud conspiracy, money laundering and illegal use of social security numbers.
The unsealing of the indictment on Wednesday was coordinated with a Homeland Security execution of search warrants at 10 locations in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, according to the federal prosecutor’s office. Fourteen of 19 defendants have been arrested by federal agents, the prosecutor’s office said.
