Identity theft arrest highlights larger issue
BY ROBERT MOORE, Tribune Staff Writer

The disconnect between a Hispanic Koch Foods employee and a valid Social Security number, which surfaced with an identity-theft arrest at the Morristown chicken-processing plant Thursday, apparently wasn’t an uncommon phenomenon, suggest jail records.

Over the past two years, 39 Hispanics who identified themselves as Koch Foods employees have been booked into the Hamblen County Jail on a variety of charges, records indicate.

Only two gave corrections officers a Social Security number. The records did not indicate whether officers attempted to verify the numbers.

One of the workers, Juan Ramos Santiago, told corrections officers he was a citizen of Mexico, not the United States, according to jail records. The purported citizenship of the other man who gave a Social Security number, Jose Gregorio Vasquez, was not listed on his booking sheet.

Hamblen County jailers do not attempt to verify the places of employment for Hispanics or other inmates, so the possibility exists that the inmates could have lied about their connection to Koch Foods.

Tim Steffin, Koch Foods human resources manager, did not return telephone calls to comment. Other company officials were given the opportunity to comment but did not return calls.

Morristown Police Department Detective Sgt. Randall Noe, the lead investigator in the identity-theft case, says a Koch Foods human resources worker reported that Koch Foods visually verifies all prospective employees’ citizenship documents.

Noe said Koch Foods indicated the company does not keep copies of the qualifying documents — Social Security cards, alien-registration cards or passports — in employees’ personnel files.

Noe arrested 27-year-old Lucia Perez Thursday afternoon because she allegedly had assumed the identity of Julie Wheeler, a 42-year-old Maine resident who says her Social Security card was stolen when she lived in Morristown two years ago.

"It concerns law enforcement any time there is a perception that someone is breaking the law, whether it be federal or state law," Morristown Police Chief Roger Overholt said Saturday afternoon.

"Any time that these situations exist, we like to examine all the information to try to determine if there is a situation which warrants further investigation," the police chief added. "We know that it’s possible for undocumented individuals to obtain false documents and present them to employers."

Noe asked that Perez be held without bond because he considers her to be a flight risk. She was released from jail Friday after posting $10,000 bond.

All but three of the 39 listed said they were born in Mexico.

Only 12 of the 39 said they were U.S. citizens, and none of those who reported they were citizens possessed a driver’s license, according to jail records.

In fact, two of the three men who had Tennessee driver’s licenses, Santiago and Florentino Ramos, told jailers they were not U.S. citizens.

One man who told authorities he worked at Koch Foods, Julio S. Mendoza, had been deported two times under two different names, according to jail records.

He and 12 other Hispanics had known aliases. A man who sometimes went by Juventino Mendoza Aragon, tops the list. He has five known aliases reports indicate.

The Koch Foods Morristown plants, which employ more than 1,000 workers, have never been raided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Immigration officers arrested dozens of illegal aliens at the Fairmont Street facility when it was Burnett Produce.

In late August, I.C.E. swarmed a Koch Foods chicken-processing plant in Fairfield, Ohio and arrested more than 160 suspected illegal immigrants, according to agency releases.

Simultaneously, agents executed search warrants at Koch’s Chicago headquarters.

The charges filed against the Koch employees in the sting include illegal re-entry to the United States, identity theft, document fraud, Social Security fraud and forgery.

Koch’s Ohio operations were targeted in a two-year federal investigation "based on evidence that Koch may have knowingly hired illegal aliens at its poultry processing and packaging facility," according to an I.C.E. press release.

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