A man who helped supply undocumented and uninsured immigrant labor to a tree removal company in Georgia has pleaded guilty to aiding in the 2017 murder of a worker who tried to blow the whistle on the practices.
Federal prosecutors said this week that Pablo Rangel-Rubio, 53, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, had been charged with harboring illegal immigrants, money laundering, and retaliating against a witness. Eliud Montoya was gunned down outside his Georgia home five years ago, just days after he reported his bosses for exploiting immigrants and avoiding workers’ compensation insurance on them.
“Pablo Rangel-Rubio was responsible for employing at least 100 illegal aliens to work for a tree service, skimming from their paychecks to further fatten his wallet, and then helping arrange the murder of a man who exposed the scheme,” David Estes, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, said in a statement. “The substantial prison sentence from this plea will hold him accountable for those crimes.”
Rangel-Rubio, formerly a supervisor at Wolf Tree Service in Savannah, could face as much as 50 years in prison and must forfeit a 27-acre residential compound he owns in Rincon, Georgia.
Prosecutors said in a news release that the man, along with his brother, Juan Rangel-Rubio, 45, of Rincon, and Higinio Perez-Bravo, 52, of Savannah, had used assumed identities for the workers and avoided taxes and insurance premiums on them. When paying the workers in cash, the...
(AP) If a government hopes to function, it has to be able to enforce its laws. Our country is no exception, and in fact, the U.S. government is very good at enforcement. So when a big fraud case c...