3 plead guilty in network of temp agencies that hid asylum seeker's work accident

Three people accused of running fraudulent temp agencies that exploited asylum seekers — and who attempted to conceal a work accident later uncovered by a 2018 CBC investigation — have pleaded guilty. 

Quebec's Labour Ministry has called the scheme the "largest fraud ever committed" against it and has estimated government losses at about $635,000 as a result of the operation.

Hector Hair Rodriguez Contreras, 56, Hector Lopez Ramos, 51, and Beatriz Adriana Guerrero Munoz, 45, were all initially charged with fraud of more than $5,000 against the Quebec and Canadian governments and conspiracy to commit fraud of more than $5,000.

Rodriguez Contreras pleaded guilty to those charges in April, roughly three weeks before his trial in Quebec Court was set to begin. 

The trio, led by Rodriguez Contreras, ran a number of temp agencies that hired asylum seekers without work permits and paid them below minimum wage in cash or cheques addressed to false identities they assigned to them. 

Court documents filed after the guilty pleas state that Quebec's Labour Ministry launched probes into the temp agencies following CBC's investigation.

Asylum seeker still in pain

The story had revealed an asylum seeker was severely injured on the job after being recruited at a Montreal Metro station by a shadowy network of temp agencies. He was given a former worker's name and social insurance number to work under the table at a meat processing plant outside the city.

Prosecutor Geneviève Bélanger said part of the group's operations were legitimate, making it difficult for the government to detect the fraud. 

"That was part of the scheme. For part of their business, if you will, they would do things in order, while for another part, they wouldn't — which also allowed them to fly under the radar," Bélanger said in an interview last week. 

The asylum seeker testified at the trial of Lopez Ramos and Guerrero Munoz in May before Quebec Court Judge Rose-Mélanie Drivod. 

The top of his hand was sliced off by a meat slicer, that, he told CBC at the time, he had not been properly shown how to use. In an emergency surgery, doctors performed a skin graft taken from his thigh to reconstruct his hand. 

He told the court that years later, he's still in pain.

The temp agency that hired him did not declare the accident to Quebec's workplace health and safety board, until the latter intervened following CBC's story and forced the company to compensate him.

The man, who is now 39 years old, said in court he'd planned to work in construction in Quebec, when he came to Canada in August 2017 and would have made a good wage that way, but instead has been working as a commercial security guard for more than five years. He and his wife have three children with them in Montreal. 

2 pleaded guilty to reduced charges

Three days into the trial and soon after the worker's testimony, Lopez Ramos and Guerrero Munoz pleaded guilty to reduced charges of using forged documents, including tax statements, against the Quebec government. 

Bélanger said the worker's testimony was emotional and powerful. 

"It clearly demonstrated the risk this type of thing poses when agencies don't respect [work] standards," she said. 

The statements of facts filed in court say that the Labour Ministry's probe, dubbed TARMAC, revealed that more than 400 of the companies' workers had also been claiming some form of unemployment benefits — many of them new immigrants who had little knowledge of Quebec's work standards and protections. 

"The leaders of the network took advantage of the vulnerability of some of the workers," the facts read. 

Martin Subak, Lopez Ramos's lawyer, says pleading guilty after a trial has begun "is commonly done to kind of test a little bit the evidence."

He said part of the reason his client and co-accused ended up being handed lesser charges was because "their roles were subservient" to Rodriguez Contreras. The charges against them could lead to a maximum of two years in jail, while the fraud charges against Rodriguez Contreras carry a 14-year maximum imprisonment.

Reached by CBC Thursday, Rodriguez Contreras's lawyer, Richard Tawil, said he didn't yet have his client's authorization to speak about the case, given it was not yet closed. The accused are set to re-appear on two separate dates at the Montreal courthouse in mid-July for sentencing.