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NEW YORK -- Twenty people were accused by a federal grand jury yesterday of conspiring to smuggle deaf Mexicans into the United States and force them to peddle trinkets on streets and subways -- a scheme that earned up to $1 million a year, officials said.
The wholesale indictment, announced in Brooklyn, outlined a bicoastal operation in which bosses in New York and Chicago allegedly used threats and violence to keep their victims in servitude. The victims sometimes were "traded" between cities like baseball teams swapping outfielders.
U.S. Attorney Zachary Carter said the defendants, 18 in custody in the United States and two in Mexico, are accused of violating the civil rights of 60 "deaf and mute" Mexicans kept in involuntary servitude since 1993. Other charges include extortion and the recruiting, smuggling, transporting and harboring of illegal aliens.
While the 11-count indictment covered crimes since 1993, the smuggling operation actually dates from 1988, and succeeded partly because the victims were too terrified to reveal their plight, officials told a news conference.
"Every case of slavery is terrible but this one is especially appalling because of the double exploitation" of people who were not only illegal aliens but physically handicapped, said Isabelle Katz Pinzler, acting chief of the Justice Department's civil rights division.
The defendants face penalties of up to 20 years for extortion, five years for conspiracy and 10 years on each of the alien smuggling-related charges. Carter spokesman William Muller said all but two were Mexican nationals.
Also, only two of the suspects were not deaf; Alfredo Rustrian Paoletti, 27, known as "the Hearing Man," and Francisco Duenas-Olveras, 28.
Duenas-Olveras was one of five defendants with Chicago addresses. One lives in Los Angeles and most others in New York, Muller said.
The operation surfaced July 19 when four deaf Mexicans showed up at a Queens police station and told of being smuggled into the United States and held in virtual bondage while peddling keychains and other cheap trinkets on subways and streets.
Police raided two houses in Queens where they found 57 people living in cramped conditions, and arrested a number of others identified as bosses or participants in the illegal ring.
Among those charged in the indictment were alleged ringleaders Renato Paoletti Lemus, 34, and his father, Jose Paoletti Moreda Sr., 59, who were arrested in Mexico City last Thursday. Carter said his office had begun extradition proceedings to return them to New York.
Mexico's attorney general said earlier that the pair were being held there on provisional charges of conspiracy and racketeering, and under Mexican law must be tried there before any extradition.
Two other men arrested in Mexico at the same time were not named in yesterday's U.S. indictment.
The 57 victims, most of them deaf and some unable to speak, remained in protective custody at a Queens motel as potential material witnesses in the case. Carter said their immigration status was "under advisement" with no action contemplated for now.
The 20-page indictment described how deaf Mexicans were recruited in their homeland with promises of "prosperous jobs and lifestyles" in the United States. Smuggled into California, they moved from "safe houses" in Los Angeles to New York and other cities, where they were coerced into hawking the cheap trinkets for up to 11 hours a day, seven days a week, turning all proceeds over to their bosses.
While the main operations were centered in New York and Chicago, some workers were temporarily sent to Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., the court papers said.
Any who balked at the arduous work were subjected to "force, violence and threats," the indictment said, citing examples in which Renato Paoletti-Lemus and his sister, Adriana Paoletti-Lemus, 29, bosses at the Queens "workhouses," allegedly punished one victim with electric shocks and handcuffed another to a bed for a week.
Carter said allegations of sexual abuse against some of the workers were still under investigation.
He said the workers, formerly a common sight on New York's subways, are believed to have sold enough of the $1 trinkets to earn between $750,000 and $1 million a year over the past five years. The disposition of the money also was still being investigated, he said.
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