The victims were immigrant workers with H-2A visas hired to harvest fruits, vegetables and other agricultural products, the DOJ said.

TAMPA, Fla. — A Mexican national pleaded guilty in a federal court in Tampa to conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. He was charged with deceiving and exploiting immigrant agricultural workers on H-2A visas between 2015 and 2017, according to the Department of Justice.

The DOJ announced the guilty plea on Tuesday of Alexander Villatoro Moreno, 53, also known as “Quichi,” who they say was part of a company that recruited and victimized Mexican immigrants to come to the U.S. on H-2A agricultural visas. 

Previously, a federal grand jury in the Middle District of Florida returned six-count indictments against multiple defendants for their roles in the conspiracy. Four of them previously pleaded guilty.

Court records reviewed by 10 Tampa Bay News state that Villatoro is the brother of Bladimir Moreno, the former owner of Los Villatoros Harvesting. 

Moreno was sentenced to prison in 2023 for forced labor, the Lakeland Ledger reported. In court documents, Moreno is mentioned as one of the people indicted in the RICO Act conspiracy. In 2022, Moreno was ordered to pay over $175,000 in restitution to the victims, the DOJ said.

Villatoro, court records show, was a supervisor and manager of the Bartow-based company operating in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina and Georgia as a farm-labor contracting company, which recruited and hired H-2A visa-holding immigrant workers.

Co-defendants and Villatoro, according to the DOJ, charged workers recruitment fees to secure employment with the company. They misled the victims about their wages, working hours, working conditions, and regarding the reimbursement for the “exorbitant” recruitment fees and other expenses.

The DOJ said that the immigrant workers were forced to do agricultural labor for long hours, “six to seven days a week, for far less pay than they were entitled to under the law.”

Beyond labor, Villatoro and the co-defendants coerced the victims into working by imposing debts on the workers, confiscating their passports, subjecting them to “crowded, unsanitary and degrading living conditions,” abusing and humiliating them, isolating them and impeding them from interacting with anyone outside of the company, threatening them with arrest, jailtime and deportation, the DOJ said.

The DOJ added that the co-defendants would threaten the workers with physical harm to their families back in Mexico if the workers failed to comply.

The guilty plea agreement, reviewed by 10 Tampa Bay News states as part of the events that Villatoro was “aware that many H-2A workers continued working for LVH [Los Villatoros Harvesting] after the expiration of their H-2A visas.”

The DOJ says that when authorities began to investigate the company, Villatoro obstructed the federal investigation “by helping to prepare false payroll information to conceal underpayments to the workers and distributing fake reimbursement receipts to the victims to make it appear that LVH was complying with the law by reimbursing the workers for their travel-related expenses.”

Villatoro pleaded guilty to multiple counts on the RICO conspiracy charges, including affecting interstate commerce with the unlawful plan and willfully joining the conspiracy, court records show. Villatoro could face a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and, if the court orders, restitution to any of the victims.

The guilty plea also adds that Villatoro could be deported.

The investigation involved the Palm Beach County Human Trafficking Task Force, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. The Department of Labor was also involved, as well as the State Department, among other agencies. The Government of Mexico supported the case by extraditing Villatoro Moreno.

You can report human trafficking to the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888.

Know your rights as an H-2A visa-holder here. Conoce tus derechos como trabajador con visa H-2A aquí.