Judge sets $1 million bond for Boulder 'Siamese Plate' owner Opas Sinprasong
By Vanessa Miller
Posted: 02/17/2010 03:20:58 PM MST


A judge on Wednesday set a $1 million bond for the owner of several Siamese Plate restaurants in Boulder and Broomfield counties who was indicted last week on immigration and fraud charges.

Opas Sinprasong, 51, has been in federal custody since his arrest Thursday on suspicion of harboring illegal aliens and making them work up to 32 hours of overtime a week without pay.

He appeared Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Denver, where a judge said he can be released on a $1 million cash or property bond. If he posts bond, he must be confined to his Boulder home and monitored electronically, according to Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for the Colorado branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Sinprasong, a Thai citizen who's been in the United States on a "non-immigrant principal investor" status since at least 1994, owns Boulder Thai restaurants Sumida's and Siamese Plate, as well as Siamese Plate on the Go, which has locations in Boulder, Louisville and Broomfield.

From 2001 to 2008, Sinprasong sponsored dozens of Thai nationals' entry into the United States as "specialty workers" for his restaurants. He required his Thai employees to enter into a two-year employment contract with detailed terms about fees they owed him and their monthly salaries, according to the indictment.

Sinprasong typically made the Thai employees work 26 to 32 hours of overtime a week without paying the overtime rate, the document said.

The allegations came to light after a 29-year-old Boulder man -- who is now a University of Colorado graduate student -- started working at one of Sinprasong's restaurants and became suspicious, according to the Immigrant Legal Center of Boulder County.

The student, who didn't want to be named out of fear of retribution, noticed that the Thai employees seemed to work around the clock, prompting him to take his concerns to El Centro Humanitario in Denver, where he met Diego Pena, a CU student who was volunteering at the center.

Pena, 33, urged the student to take his suspicions to the Immigrant Legal Center, where staff members began compiling information on the alleged violations. City officials became involved, Pena said, along with the Consumer Protection Division of the Boulder County District Attorney's Office.

Local authorities eventually turned the case over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. After about two years of investigative work, Sinprasong was indicted on suspicion of 10 counts of wire fraud, 40 counts of failure to pay employee federal payroll taxes, five counts of false swearing in an immigration matter and four counts of harboring illegal aliens.

"Between the Immigrant Legal Center and the city of Boulder, we were able to pool our resources and get something going to bring this to light," Pena said. "But (the student) is really a hero in this situation. If it wasn't for him, no one would know what was going on."

Laurel Herndon, executive director of the Immigrant Legal Center of Boulder County, urged community members "to be aware of situations that seem like possible exploitation and not to turn a blind eye."


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