Kennedale precast concrete company execs who masked undocumented workers plead guilty
Four executives at a Kennedale-based precast concrete manufacturing company hid two dozen undocumented employees from law enforcement authorities and have pleaded guilty to crimes connected to the effort.
The owners of Speed Fab-Crete shifted from its payroll to a second company 23 people who Homeland Security Investigations agents had identified as lacking the legal authorization to work in the United States, the defendants acknowledged in plea agreements filed in U.S. District Court.
Charged in the case were Speed Fab-Crete executives Carl Hall, David Bloxom, Ronald Hamm and Robert James. Mark Sevier, the owner of Take Charge Staffing, the Fort Worth company to which the employees were transferred, was also charged.
Bloxom is a former Fort Worth school board member.
Agreements in the cases of Bloxom, Hamm, James and Sevier, who pleaded guilty to unlawful employment of aliens, call for the sentence to include a $69,000 fine. Other elements of the sentences are left to a U.S. District Court judge.
Hall pleaded guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully harbor illegal aliens.
The undocumented employees’ concealment occurred between April 2016 and August 2017, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
Homeland Security Investigations agents in October 2015 reviewed I-9 forms and determined that about 40 Speed Fab-Crete employees were not authorized to work in the United States because they were in the country illegally, according to the case’s charging document.
The company notified the government that it had released the employees, but had not. It moved 23 of them to Take Charge Staffing’s payroll.
The defendants “unlawfully enriched themselves by shielding from detection” the undocumented workers, according to the charging document.
Speed Fab-Crete negotiated a non-prosecutorial agreement with the government, and no charges were filed against the company, its attorney, Matthew Orwig, wrote in response to a request from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram for comment on the defendants’ guilty pleas.
“The company has been in full compliance since the violations and will continue to monitor our workforce to avoid any future issues,” Orwig wrote.
The violations did not involve Speed Fab-Crete’s general contracting business or projects and were limited to its precast concrete manufacturing plant, Orwig wrote.
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 5:30 AM.
