From the New York Times:
U.S. Seizes 14 7-Eleven Stores in Immigration Raids
By MOSI SECRET and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: June 17, 2013
More than a dozen 7-Eleven franchises took in more than $180 million in revenue by running a “modern-day plantation system,” prosecutors in New York charged on Monday, built on the unpaid labor of dozens of illegal immigrants hired using sham Social Security numbers.
Federal authorities seized 14 7-Eleven stores on Long Island and in Virginia, arresting nine owners and managers, and seized property, including five homes. They are investigating 40 other 7-Eleven franchises in New York City and elsewhere in one of the largest criminal immigrant employment investigations ever conducted by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, officials said.
Through the scheme, the defendants, who as franchisees for the parent company were licensed to use 7-Eleven buildings, trademarks and Slurpee and hot dog machines, recruited more than 50 illegal immigrants and gave them identities stolen from American citizens, including children and dead people.
The employees worked for 100 hours a week but were paid for a fraction of that time, and were forced to live in substandard housing owned by the operators of the convenience stores, the authorities said.
The store managers escaped notice, some for more than a decade, because the national company, 7-Eleven Inc., which has more than 7,600 stores in the United States, did not have safeguards in place to protect its payroll system from employee fraud, the authorities said. For example, two immigrant employees, one in New York and one in Virginia, used the same Social Security number to get paid.
We're constantly told by the New York Times that the Obama Administration is deporting inhumanly vast numbers of illegal immigrants. But there seldom seem to be examples of raids on businesses in the newspapers, suggesting that all that's happened is that Obama juiced the numbers by reclassifying any border crosser who gets caught by the Border Patrol on the north side of the line as a "deportee."
So, finally we get Big News: the feds have found more than fifty (>50) illegal immigrants working at 7-11s. It's front page news!
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53 comments:
So now we get some token enforcement to convince people that "reform" will have some teeth.
These people are so boringly predictable.
one thing i'm always amazed at when i pop over to america is just how evident and in the open pure ethnic nepotism can be, especially when it comes to these dingy little franchise businesses. i saw a dunkin' donuts in some hole in the wall that had nobody but indians staffing it. i am dumbfounded by the remarkable ability for the motel industry there to somehow, by sheer stroke of extreme coincidence (of course), seem to employ people with 'patel' as their last name. not even trying to hide it. white boy, your replacements are here but they're not hiring you.
i even see this from time to time way out here in the rural outback. had to stop for gas in a tiny village in the completely agriculturally based riverina region of nsw, and everybody who worked at the petrol station was from the subcontinent.
Talk about burying the lede:
The investigation led to two families and their associates with roots in Pakistan and the Philippines, who recruited from their own ethnic communities.
Farrukh and Bushra Baig, a married couple and American citizens from Pakistan who live on Long Island, owned and managed 12 stores in New York and Virginia along with Mr. Baig’s brothers, Zahid and Shannawaz, and his associates, Malik Yousaf, Tariq Rana and Ramon Nanas. All have been charged.
A separate case was brought against two brothers, Ahzar Zia, a citizen of the United States and Pakistan, and Ummar Uppal, who the authorities said was an illegal immigrant. They own and control two stores in Suffolk County.
Immigrants do the 100 hour per week jobs Americans won't do.
Just think, if they can keep it up at a rate 50 per day, in 600 years they will have deported all of the illegals.
" ut there seldom"... please fix. No need to publish this.
I am sure everyone knew about these situations. Just right now the government wants every cent it can put its hands on and it goes around seizing stuff with any excuse.
In fact, not a word about the relation between the output product (quality and quantity) and the use of illegals.
what do call a hindu super spy?
seven-double-one
The greatest part of all this is that HSI/ICE upper management will decide that all the employees fall under the Human Trafficking victim visa and they get to stay here and get those fat federal benefits.
The key to bringing illegal immigration to a halt is to go after illegal employers.
I've noticed that if any large-scale operation against illegal immigration is taken these days, it has to be sold to the media as protecting the immigrants from exploitation of some kind. The "plantation slaves" in this case were no doubt willing participants in the racket, who believed their employment conditions were a price worth paying for getting a foothold in America. I wonder what are the chances they'll be allowed to legally stay in the country "on compassionate grounds" when the case is over?
Maybe the most interesting thing about 7-Eleven is that it is a Japanese company. Japan has almost twice as many 7-Eleven stores as the much larger US and all operations are run from there.
I thought 7-Elevens were dying out - probably because I never go to any of them anymore. But no, they are prospering, having just surpassed McDonalds among franchisers.
Albertosaurus
I'd like to know whether or not the "owners" here benefitted from minority small business loans.
And this is the tinniest tip of the tinniest iceberg. The extent of immigrant criminal enterprises is staggering. They know how to milk the system, whether it's Medicare fraud, neo-slavery enterprises like this one, prostitution rings, drug cartels, anti-American cultural nepotism in corporations and government agencies (go check the mono-chromatic color of your IT department), etc.
They gin all the gimmedats from EBT to housing subsidies to free medical care to say nothing of stuffing the schools at immense cost. Truly, we must be the first nation in history to willingly import a criminal class and to provide them food, housing and cash on top of it. Well ok, all of Europe is doing it too.
This $180 million in revenue across 14 stores equals an average of $12.85 million in revenue per store. I am not sure what the gross margins, EBIT margins, and profit margins are.
This Columbia Business school study indicates a gross profit margin of 35.54%. From my experience this is on the lower end or gross profit for a retail establishment.
http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/filemgr?file_id=64359
12.85 million * 35.54% GPM = $4.56 million in gross margin a year.
I have a hard time believing the $180 million number over 14 stores and $12.85 million per store. I have searched for per store revenue, the majority of estimates online indicate 1.2-2.0 million in revenue per year.
I guess the feds really wanted to make the case seem like it was a big deal by pumping up the overall revenue to $180 million/12.85 million. These numbers are unbelievable.
From reading 7-eleven franchise reviews, the franchisor 7-11 corporate takes a huge cut of profits in terms of royalty fees, substantially higher than other franchise agreements. It makes sense that immigrants would participate in this type of franchise slavery and then furthermore exploit other immigrants.
One can only assume that this is an administration ploy to show that they are Tough on Immigration Enforcement.
And yet, it seems too clever by half:
"The investigation led to two families and their associates with roots in Pakistan and the Philippines, who recruited from their own ethnic communities. "
The NYT doubtless sees this story as part of a bring-these-poor-exploited-people-out-of-the-shadows narrative.
I suspect, however, that many ordinary Americans encountering this story will think, "Why are these Third World criminal rackets present in our country in the first place?"
I know that's my reaction.
I have a quick question that may seem obvious to the average isteve reader, so forgive me for my ignorance. One theme the pro-amnesty crowd harps on is that once there is amnesty, the illegal workers will finally be able to pay taxes. However, if the illegals are already using fraudulent social security numbers, then they are already being taxed on what they earn, correct?
I noticed this when I was working in a cherry packing plant in Stockton. Most of the workers had SS numbers,and paid taxes on their income, but were in the States illegally. I asked one worker about it and he said it was pretty easy to get fraudulent documents.
"Farrukh and Bushra Baig, a married couple and American citizens from Pakistan who live on Long Island, owned and managed 12 stores in New York and Virginia along with Mr. Baig’s brothers, Zahid and Shannawaz, and his associates, Malik Yousaf, Tariq Rana and Ramon Nanas."
Doing the jobs Americans won't do.
7-Eleven Inc., which has more than 7,600 stores in the United States, did not have safeguards in place to protect its payroll system from employee fraud
The federal government has no programs in place to prevent SSN fraud! In fact the federal government de facto encourages SSN fraud.
...suggesting that all that's happened is that Obama juiced the numbers by reclassifying any border crosser who gets caught by the Border Patrol on the north side of the line as a "deportee."
No need to qualify that statement. Obama himself admitted that's what he's doing:
It's on the White House website, for crying out loud!
It's front page news, but not because of illegal aliens. It's front page news because of its human trafficking and slave labor angle.
The illegals, most likely, will not be deported, but given some preferential treatment like legal status for testimony. OTOH, those arrested for human trafficking will surely go to jail.
See what happens when Bloombewrg outlaws Big Gulp cups!
Submitting a fraudulent SSN is a felony publishable by up to five years in jail.
Of course it's only technically a felony if the authorities bother to prosecute it, and 99.9% of the time they don't, at least where illegals are concerned. (Don't try it if you're an actual American)
With respect to the pending amnesty bill, felons will be excluded from amnesty. But very large numbers of illegals commit felonies of the fake SSN sort - the government simply refuses to press charges against them.
See?! There is a shortage of H-1B visas!
How long and Slim afford to subsidized the unprofitable NYT? Isn't there anything we can do to help it drain his deep pockets faster?
More remarkable is that the NSA can vacuum up every phone call of 300 million Americans; yet the INS can't figure out the same SSN, so ostensibly the same person, is working two minimum wage jobs three states away from each other.
The gov is slowly enforcing e-verify, so employers just acquiesce and fire those that cannot pass e-verify. The illegal workers hopefully go back home .
My guess is the third world owners of those 7-11's figured a combination of bribes, pressure from their home country's embassy, and even the US state department would smooth things over, so they didn't bother.
btw, if illegal workers are replaced by legal workers how is that reflected in the employment statistics?
o/t, can't remember if this was noted - Telegraph obit of Paul Soros:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/10123415/Paul-Soros.html
"In 1997, in gratitude for the life America had given them, he and his wife Daisy — also a Hungarian émigré — established a foundation to support the graduate education of "new Americans" — first-generation immigrants or their children. The Soros family provided endowments of $75 million, and more than 400 students have benefited to date."
Surely a better way to show gratitude would have been to do something for the Americans who were there when he arrived?
Agents from ICE had interviewed some of the illegal immigrants and, for now, were treating them as potential witnesses and were not seeking to move to deport them, Mr.Picard said.
All the owners were Pakistani, except Ramon Nanas, presumably from the Philippines. Is Mr. Nanas Muslim?
not to worry, syrian "refugees" will take their place.
america, just a dumping ground now. a random jumble of brown people.
What would our country do without developing world entrepreneurs. The sheer audacity and genius of their business model amazes me.
Step1 Get a minority small business loan from the Feds
Step 2 Rent a beat up store front in a ghetto where no large grocery could successfully do business due to pilferage, vandalism, and graffiti.
Step 3 Drive to Cosco to buy cases of cheap scotch, candy bars, and condoms.
Step 4 Procure some old shelving and a cash register from a bankruptcy sale.
Step 5 Set up dingy store and mark up everything by a factor of two above retail.
Step 6 Sit behind counter all day making change, scratching your oily scalp under your turban, and reading Playboy magazines.
After a while you figure you need a slave to run your profitable store while you open up another one. You also figure that you can buy discounted SNAP cards from your clientele to further reduce the price of restocking your shithole.
Yes, America needs more third world entrepreneurial geniuses to sell daily essentials to the poor at inflated prices.
These 7-11 store franchisees operate their business on the recently-disclosed Rubio principle: unemployed Americans, if the truth be known, don't have what it takes to keep the Slurpee machine in ice and syrup or the roller grill in ballpark-style franks.
No siree: to find workers able to shoulder these demanding responsibilities, we must throw open our borders to those star performers available only from third-world cradles of high performance like Chechnya, and Mexico, and North Africa.
The fact that these star performers will work a hundred hours a week for peanuts while living in the storeroom is just icing on the cake.
Uh-oh, it looks like somebody at 7-Eleven, Inc. forgot to mail the check to the Democatic National Campaign Committee.
Agents from ICE had interviewed some of the illegal immigrants and, for now, were treating them as potential witnesses and were not seeking to move to deport them, Mr.Picard said.
Sigh. They can't even do a symbolic deportation.
So I guess Joe Biden was right. I don't think these employees were Indians, though.
Koreans in NYC were doing the same thing a few years ago. They were keeping Guatemalan slaves locked in their stores and paying them $4 an hour.
I don't think I've ever seen someone working at an Indian/Pakistani/Korean owned small business who wasn't an immigrant from the owner's own ethnic group or a Central American illegal.
So much for immigrant entrepreneurs creating jobs for Americans.
Will there be deportations?
r. daneel goatweed
"The store managers escaped notice, some for more than a decade, because the national company, 7-Eleven Inc., which has more than 7,600 stores in the United States, did not have safeguards in place to protect its payroll system from employee fraud"
If a business with $17 billion in revenue does not have such protections in place, it's because it doesn't want to have such protections in place.
"...i saw a dunkin' donuts in some hole in the wall that had nobody but indians staffing it."
All dunkin' donuts are like that, as far as I can tell.
"However, if the illegals are already using fraudulent social security numbers, then they are already being taxed on what they earn, correct?"
Taxes are being withheld at source under that SSN. BTW, I used to use Richard Nixon's SSN (567-68-0515) when some busybody asked for SSN and I didn't think they had any business doing so, e.g. ConEd.
o/t again, amateur soccer game in Paris, not many beret and baguette types present:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNOpLIfiTEE
Via Tim Blair, whose Aussie MSM blog is always worth keeping an eye on.
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/
I've never believed any of the noise people trot out to prove that illegal immigration just isn't the problem it used to be.
All one has to do is view the streets of Mexican cities and towns on Google Street View to see what life there is really like.
They'll all be given U visas and eventually permanent resident status. Any kind of crime victim can apply for a U visa ; it's pushed a lot on domestic violence shelters when they get an illegal alien claiming domestic violence -which can include verbal threats. The illegal just has to make a claim that her boyfriend said he would kill her and boom she gets the U visa and all the benefits that come with it.
@Rob: " I wonder what are the chances they'll be allowed to legally stay in the country "on compassionate grounds" when the case is over?"
The federal prosecutor will give them all green cards in return for testimony against the store owners.
I bet 7-11 Corp. gets prosecuted as well, and they'll probably be forced to make a multi-million dollar donation to La Raza as a penalty and hire the former 7-11 workers for the 7-11 executive training program.
7-Eleven Inc., which has more than 7,600 stores in the United States, did not have safeguards in place to protect its payroll system from employee fraud, the authorities said. For example, two immigrant employees, one in New York and one in Virginia, used the same Social Security number to get paid.
The writer of this story did not think it worth mentioning that the US government does not have safeguards in lace to protect the Social Security system. Nobody in our all-encompassing surveillance state noticed that the same SSN was being used by (at least) three different people?
But I already know the answer. They DID notice it. They just didn't do anything about it.
“””I guess the feds really wanted to make the case seem like it was a big deal by pumping up the overall revenue to $180 million/12.85 million. These numbers are unbelievable.”””
Convenience Stores, especially those run by our immigrant friends are notorious for other scams like food stamp fraud. You go in and pretend to buy $100 of food with your EBT card and the owners give you $50 and they keep $50. However since this is government money they need to declare it tax wise and this pushes up the stores sales. This is how the government usually finds these operations, the owner gets greedy and pushes up sales beyond what is reasonable for a small store and they get caught.
I was in a 7-11 this afternoon, right in the area where the busts occurred although the particular one was not among them. There was a memo posted behind the counter, presumably something customers weren't supposed to see, that listed the breakeven points by package for the various heated snack foods the store sells. I would imagine that sales above those points represent profit. In any event, the breakeven points were surprisingly low, always under 50% of the package. A few I remember:
Five slices, for a 3-pack of pizza yielding 12 slices.
Three taquitos, from a 10-pack.
Nine wings, from a tray of 20.
Not a bad business model.
Peter
I am just barely old enough that my original Social Security card included, fairly prominently displayed directly under the SSN, "This number is not to be used for identification."
Of course, in this case, as in so many others, "The past is another country, they do things differently there."
"Anonymous Anonymous said...
Just think, if they can keep it up at a rate 50 per day, in 600 years they will have deported all of the illegals."
Actually, I bet none of them get deported. The officially designated bad-guys in the story are the slave-driver pakistani owners. If anything, this will be used as yet another example of how the illegal aliens need to be "brought out of the shadows".
If we're going to naturalize immigrants from all over the globe can we at least demand that people from hellholes like Pakistan give up dual citizenship? Personally I don't mind if citizens of the UK, France, Sweden etc. want to maintain dual citizenship. But wanting to be a citizen of Pakistan and the US is contradiction in terms. Anyone who says they want that has no business with American citizenship.
Gloria
"Maybe the most interesting thing about 7-Eleven is that it is a Japanese company."
Yup, I sometimes spring that on my friends:
"...the world's largest operator, franchisor and licensor of convenience stores, with more than 50,000 outlets...
7-Eleven Japan runs all of 7-Eleven franchise worldwide and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
7-Eleven's American division has its headquarters in... Dallas."
In the 1980s the original US parent company went broke and an owner of Japanese 7-11s got controlling interest in 1991:
"... was rescued from bankruptcy by Ito-Yokado, its largest franchisee..."
>All one has to do is view the streets of Mexican cities and towns on Google Street View to see what life there is really like.<
That must be sarcasm. Just off the top of my head, Cuernavaca, Puebla, Santiago de Querétaro, and large sections of Mexico City are clean and safe.
Just because many Mexicans lead a good life in their land doesn't mean they mix well with us and ours. To fit in down here, a gringo (the term is somewhat affectionate) must keep a grip on his money, know a bit of Spanish, and observe social niceties that were second-nature to his great-grandparents but are not such to all of his contemporaries. But twenty million gringos would never be welcomed by Mexico, nor should they be. Nor should Americans ever welcome twenty million Mexicans.
A place doesn't have to be Somalia before you can reject virtually unlimited immigration from it.
Funny, I was just in Gulf Florida just north of Tampa, and the busy Dunkin' Donuts I patronized all week was staffed entirely by whites.
It would never happen back home in Boston.
Last month at a Dunkin Donuts in upstate N.Y. I noticed all the staff were non-Latino white as well as the landscapers working outside. Apparently if you go far enough toward Canada these jobs suddenly metamorphose into the sort that Americans will do. Obviously working inside the pink/festive decor coffee shop was too emasculating for all but 1 Albany-area male who, judging from affect, may have been the town Gleek
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