Thread: 2 investigated in hiring of illegal workers

2 investigated in hiring of illegal workers

Agents: Men drove foreigners to, from hotel jobs

Pedro Ruz Gutierrez | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted November 11, 2006

Two Osceola County businessmen are under investigation by federal authorities who say they have employed dozens of illegal foreign workers to staff up to 40 area hotels.

Artur Glowacki, a Polish-born Canadian citizen and legal U.S. resident, and Julius Macuha, a Czech citizen who overstayed a tourist visa, own at least eight companies that provide housekeeping, security, front-desk and food services at hotels.

An affidavit by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, obtained by the Orlando Sentinel, shows Glowacki and Macuha have been under scrutiny for more than a year.

Neither Glowacki nor Macuha have been arrested or charged but up to five of their employees were detained last week. Some of them are being held as material witnesses.

Reached at their Celebration home Friday afternoon, Glowacki and his wife would not comment. Calls to his attorney were not returned.

His Czech counterpart also did not want to discuss the investigation by ICE agents, the Internal Revenue Service and the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. "I don't have time for this, OK," said Macuha, when reached by phone late Friday.

The affidavit states that eight of the pair's companies -- I.S.S. USA Inc., I.S.S. International Inc., I.S.S. International LLC, Adelco Services Inc., Florida Hotel Cleaning Services Inc., C.P.S.S. of Kissimmee Inc., MJ Services Inc., and WPSC Inc. -- "have contracts with 30 to 40 hotels in the Orlando area and throughout the Southeast."

The men employ more than 200 workers, mostly from Eastern Europe and Mexico, and used vans to transport them to and from hotels, the affidavit says. They also provided temporary housing to the workers.

"This criminal enterprise is headed by Artur Glowacki and Julius Macuha," ICE Agent Arnaldo Santiago wrote in the complaint. "Glowacki and Macuha are aware that many of the workers are not permitted to work in the United States but hire them anyway."

Santiago also noted that "some of the workers have been employed with Glowacki and Macuha, through various companies, since 1999 and 2000."

On Nov. 3, federal agents and deputy sheriffs searched Glowacki's $1 million home and two condo units associated with him and Macuha -- one at the Audubon Villas off Hunters Creek Boulevard and one on Via Capri Lane off Celebration Boulevard.

"In addition to executing the search warrants, ICE served grand jury subpoenas on numerous persons employed by the targets of this investigation," the affidavit says.

That day, five foreign workers were detained on their way to work hotels, and at least two were found to be illegally in the country. They are being held without bail to compel testimony.

Some of the subpoenas were hand delivered to hotels in the tourism corridors of International Drive in Orange County and U.S. Highway 192 in Kissimmee. The hotels visited by agents included the Swan and Dolphin Resort at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista.

Treva Marshall, spokeswoman for the Swan and Dolphin properties, said federal agents delivered a subpoena to the hotel asking for information on contractors.

"There were different vendors of the hotel that they were requesting the information on," Marshall said.

ICE officials in Orlando this week would not discuss the case and referred all calls to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Carolyn Adams, who heads the office, said she could not comment.

Pedro Ruz Gutierrez can be reached at pruz@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5620.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/...dlines-osceola

At the expense of sounding like a "Nativist", It appears to me that there is an underlying theme to these raids. Illegals taking advantage of other illegals to make money off of the American system and take jobs from American Citizens.
Hotels managed to have workers before the influx, but I guess they had to pay a reasonable wage and couldn't pay slave labor wages. I wonder how much these two charged the hotels by the hour for the workers and how much they paid the workers? This is a little scam that is probably being played out all over the country in every service industry.

The people involved in this were Eastern European just as many other cases that made the papers. Why don't we hear about the Hispanics doing this and getting caught?