Farm boss gets 30-year term for exploiting homeless by running a slave work camp

[Herman Munster]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16557951.htm

The farm boss lured recruits from homeless shelters with promises of good work and steady pay, yet when the destitute arrived at the East Palatka camp of Ronald Evans Sr., they faced a different reality: a hovel-turned-open-market bazaar filled with crack, booze and cigarettes sold from the ''company store.'' Evans docked workers' pay so steeply they pocketed just 30 cents on the dollar.

The workers, mostly black men recruited from Miami to Tampa and beyond, had become literally addicted to the camp, unable to flee until their debt was squared. On Friday in Jacksonville federal court, Evans faced his penance: 30 years in prison, the longest sentence handed out for abuse of farmworkers in recent Florida history. ''Everyone realized this was an abhorrent act,'' said Paul I. Perez, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida.

Evans, 59, had been convicted in August on 57 charges of engaging in a criminal enterprise, distributing crack cocaine, dealing in contraband, spoiling the environment, violating federal farmworker statutes and more than four dozen counts of improper financial transactions. His two labor camps have been forfeited to the government, one in Florida and the other in Newton Grove, N.C., and Evans and his wife Jequita -- his co-defendant -- must hand over $1.1 million in ill-gotten gains.

`LIKE A SLAVE CAMP'

''It was more like a slave camp. After he gets you there, he's got you,'' one former Evans worker, recruited from a Tampa Salvation Army shelter, told the newspaper in 2003. ``A couple of guys said they owed $10,000. You might as well owe them your soul, because where can you go?''

U.S. Attorney Perez said the government's investigation was prompted by the newspaper's series.

''We jumped on what you guys exposed,'' Perez said after the sentencing.

In 2003, the FBI launched a criminal investigation, later to be joined by the U.S. Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency and others.

''Several laborers told agents that when laborers became indebted to the Evans Labor Camp, they were not allowed to leave,'' court records say.

[Canuckistanian]

1. Evans sounds like a hard-working "entrepreneur" to me

If these "malcontents" didn't like working there, they could have taken a powder any time, right?

After all, this is a free country. Any arguments?

[jody]

2. Bush does similar things to military recruits, they become slaves. n/t

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

3. Corporations all over the world do similar things.

Its called capitalism.

[Blue_Tires]

4. hideous

i bet those unregulated-market clowns over at AEI get absolutely orgasmic over this kind of worker 'arrangement'