Thread: KY:Landscape owner pleads guilty to employing illegal aliens

Landscape owner pleads guilty to employing illegal aliens
by SOPnewswire

Posted 5 hours, 29 minutes ago

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The owner of an Oldham County landscaping company pleaded guilty here Monday to employing illegal aliens at his business. This plea resulted from a criminal worksite enforcement investigation conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Dean A. Hedges, 49, pleaded guilty Oct. 1 in U.S. District Court in the Western District of Kentucky before U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Whalin to charges he knowingly employed illegal aliens at his landscaping company in Crestwood, Ky.

Information filed in federal court Monday charges Hedges and his companies - Hedges Landscape Specialists Inc., Exterior Designs Inc., and Performance Irrigation LLC, all located at 7606 Highway 329 in Crestwood - with employing illegal aliens. The charges claim that between Sept. 25, 2006, and Sept. 24, 2007, Hedges Landscape Specialists knowingly employed at least 12 illegal aliens and that Dean Hedges engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring illegal aliens.

A former employee informed ICE agents that it was common knowledge that Dean Hedges employed illegal aliens to work for Exterior Designs Inc. and Performance Irrigation, and that those illegal aliens were considered a subclass of employees. For example, the illegal alien employees were paid a flat rate regardless of the number of hours worked during the week.

According to court documents, ICE agents were contacted by former employees of the business and alerted that illegal aliens were being employed by Hedges. One employee told ICE agents that during the time he/she worked for Hedges, Hedges knowingly and openly employed illegal aliens to work for his company. The former employee estimated that Hedges seasonally employed between 10 to 15 illegal aliens during the spring months through late June and early July, and that the business picked up again during the fall planting season. The former employee said that, at the direction of Hedges, he/she was ordered to pay the illegal aliens on about 20 to 25 occasions in cash "under the table" for work they performed as employees of Hedges Landscape Specialists.

http://www.thesop.org/index.php?id=7656

Hope he receives a stiff sentence. Maybe others will learn.