posted June 18, 2006 01:32 PM            

The last known ringleader in a case of human smuggling that began unraveling at a Grand Forks restaurant and turned into one of the biggest human trafficking cases in the nation's history was sentenced to prison in federal court this week in Fargo.

It ends a key phase of the case - involving 6,000 illegal immigrant workers slaving in Asian restaurants across the Midwest - but more cases against more restaurant owners might be built, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Nick Chase, who prosecuted the case.

"This whole case started with two Mexican guys who walked away from the restaurant in Grand Forks - or were fired - and were found walking along a road outside Grand Forks in a thunderstorm," Chase said Thursday.

That was in August 2004. The two Mexican men told agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement they had been working more than 70 hours a week for less than $2 an hour at the Buffet House, a Chinese restaurant on Gateway Drive and Stanford Road. They had been living with eight other restaurant employees in a small apartment a block from the restaurant.

Federal officials soon found that the owners of the Buffet House, Yun Di Lu and Hong Peng, illegally were employing several Mexican men in virtual slave conditions.

Soon, a multistate racket of human smuggling based in Texas was uncovered, which from 2000 to early 2005 had shipped 6,000 illegal immigrants to restaurants in several states, including North Dakota and Minnesota.

Ya Cao, of McKinney, Texas, was sentenced Wednesday in Fargo to 21 months in prison for her role in the scheme. She was the last of eight co-conspirators who ran the pipeline smuggling humans into virtual slavery, Chase said.

In sentencing Cao, U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson said the scheme was an especially "destructive conspiracy" that amounted to modern-day "slave labor" and treated the illegal immigrant workers "like animals."

"These people were essentially held in bondage," Erickson said.

It was started by Shan Wei Yu, also of McKinney, who was tried last year in federal court in Grand Forks and sentenced by Erickson in December to nine years in prison, more than the federal sentencing guidelines suggest.

Also last year, Yu's associate, An Dong Cen, 35, of Houston, was sentenced in the case.

Cao was the eighth and last of the ringleaders sentenced; all are Chinese. All of the workers were Hispanic illegal immigrants, Chase said.

It was the first such case prosecuted in North Dakota, Chase said.

Lee Finstad, a Grand Forks attorney, defended Cao and sought a lesser sentence this week, saying she had a clean record and had cooperated with authorities.

Yu, through his company, Great Texas Employment Agency, took advantage of Cao after she came to America to seek political asylum, Finstad said.

"My client did not come to the United States with the intent to commit any criminal activity," Finstad told Judge Erickson Wednesday, The Associated Press reported.

Erickson told Finstad Cao was lucky she didn't get three years in prison.

Finstad asked Erickson to delay the start of Cao's sentence because her husband and son recently received permission to leave China for the United States. Erickson said Cao could report on Aug. 1 to a prison close to where her family decides to live.

At an earlier hearing, Finstad said that Cao pleaded guilty to avoid being deported. He said Cao has an accounting degree from a Chinese college, and went to cosmetology school in Texas before starting her own salon.

"It's a real tear-jerker," Finstad said after the earlier hearing, according to the AP.

"This sentencing concludes this phase of a sordid criminal enterprise," Chase's boss, U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley, said in a news release this week. "Those prosecutions led to the supplier of those illegal workers, which turned out to be one of the largest-on-record human smuggling rings in terms of workers smuggled."

Six of the illegal immigrant employees found working in the Buffet House in Grand Forks were deported once their illegal status was determined. Several cooperated in the investigation.

Owners Lu and Peng were sentenced last year in Grand Forks to four months in prison; Peng was deported to China, Lu still is seeking asylum in the United States. The restaurant was closed but reopened months ago under new ownership.

Here's how it worked: Restaurant owners paid $450 to get a cheap employee, who was run up through the pipeline, probably from Texas or California. Cell phone calls connected Yu's employment agency to Asian restaurants around the Midwest.

Restaurant owners then deducted that $450 from the paltry paychecks of the illegal employees, as well as rent money for the crowded apartments and meal money. The owners also did not deduct federal income tax or Social Security payments from the pay of the overworked illegal immigrant workers.

The case involved restaurants in Grand Forks, Devils Lake, Fargo, Bismarck and Minot as well as Aberdeen, S.D., the Twin Cities and Duluth, and in several other Midwest states.

"It appeared it was really kind of an assessment of supply and demand at its most sinister level," Chase said. "The head of this conspiracy basically realized there was a big market in restaurants he knew of that needed illegal workers because they were cheap. And he was living in an area where there was an abundance of illegal workers."

No violence was used, but restaurant owners asked for small people or those who did not speak English or were new to America, obviously looking for people who could be controlled, Chase said.

"These guys were taken (from Texas) to places like Grand Forks and Devils Lake and dropped off, and the workers relied on the employer for housing, for a job and for food. They have no connections in Grand Forks or Devils Lake, don't speak English, and get paid less than they were told they would, and conditions are less than what was promised. But where exactly do they turn at that point?"

Only 50 or 60 of the illegal immigrant workers were processed in the investigation, many of them deported. The whereabouts of the rest of the 6,000 workers sent through the pipeline in the years 2000 to 2004 are not known, Chase said.

The case likely isn't over, Chase said.