Fort Pierce company guilty of scheme to employ undocumented workers

MIAMI, Fla. (CBS 12) — A Fort Pierce business and one of its employees admitted to creating fake companies to hire undocumented workers and avoid the IRS.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that law enforcement officers were involved in the shooting of East Coast Truss (ECT) on August 6, 2021, in St. It says it executed a search warrant at its headquarters in St. Lucie County, where it found that 28 of the 58 employees present were not authorized to work in the United States. States.

ECT pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy to harbor aliens through employment. Kelly Yanira Del Valle pleaded guilty to the same charges on Aug. 29, along with filing false tax returns and assisting in the filing of false tax returns, according to an Aug. 29 statement from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Both ECT and Del Valle agreed to a forfeiture adjustment of $450,000 for ECT and $100,000 for Del Valle, as well as $100,146 in damages to the IRS.

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In defense documents filed with the court, it was stated that ECT and Del Vale admitted that numerous ECT officers and employees, including Del Valle, conspired to harbor employees who were in the country illegally from June 1, 2018 to August 6, 2021.

The Justice Department found that in June 2018, Del Valle met with ECT’s president, an executive member, and a civil servant manager at ECT headquarters and agreed to “transfer” ECT workers to Hollys Services, a company created by Del Valle. did. evading authorities and keeping employees off ECT’s payroll.

Del Valle would receive a fee from ECT for each person on Hollys Services’ payroll who worked for ECT. Del Valle also agreed to recruit unauthorized others to work for ECT under the guise of Hollys Services and later obtain another account under the name Quality Control.

The plan was created as a workaround after an Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 audit conducted by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in May 2018 identified dozens of ECT employees who were not authorized to work in the United States, according to a statement from the DOJ.

Throughout the conspiracy, ECT transferred more than $1.15 million to a bank account opened by Del Valle under the name Hollys Services and transferred more than $2.2 million to another Del Valle bank account under the name Quality Control.

Del Valle faces up to 16 years in federal prison for his charges, and ECT faces up to five years of supervised release and a maximum fine of $500,000 or twice the gross loss or gain caused by the scheme, whichever is greater. .

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