Owner Pleads Guilty in Immigration Bust
Wednesday October 17, 1:42 pm ET
By Oskar Garcia, Associated Press Writer
Lawn Company Owner Pleads Guilty to Harboring Illegal Immigrants

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- A Grand Island lawn care company owner has pleaded guilty to harboring illegal immigrants and manipulating financial transactions to avoid reporting them.
David Wortman turned himself in for arrest last month, one day after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided Cloudburst Lawn and Sprinkler and arrested 19 suspected illegal immigrants.

The criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Nebraska accused Wortman of knowingly hiring the illegal workers and paying them in cash to work for Cloudburst Lawn and Sprinkler.

Wortman admitted Monday to hiring 26 workers without checking their identification or getting any proof they were eligible to work in the United States.

Seven of the workers were arrested in May after a traffic stop of a Cloudburst van, ICE spokesman Tim Counts said Wednesday.

Counts said the 26 workers arrested had not yet been deported and were awaiting hearings at an immigration court in Omaha.

Wortman was under investigation by ICE, the IRS and the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Attorney Joe Stecher said in a news release.

Wortman was scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 22. In a plea deal, he agreed to be sentenced to 30 months in prison and to file new tax returns for 2005 and 2006.

According to the criminal complaint, Wortman told federal officials that the company's gross sales in 2005 were more than $1.5 million.

Stecher said Wortman cashed several checks from customers that were for less than $10,000 each but represented larger business dealings that should have been federally reported. Stecher said the 45 transactions totaled about $440,000 and were paid in groups of 22 to 108 checks.

Under his plea agreement, Wortman agreed to forfeit the $440,000, not only for the unreported transactions, but also to pay $200,000 to the Labor Department to settle claims of unpaid overtime.

The company had provided some lawn care, maintenance and snow removal services for the city of Grand Island from sometime in 2002 to sometime in 2005.

A spokeswoman for the city did not immediately return a phone call from The Associated Press seeking comment, but has said city officials were reviewing Cloudburst's status as an approved vendor for the city.

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