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ความคิดเห็นที่ 52 |
อีกตัวอย่างนึง
จาก New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2007/10/09/2007-10-09_girl_who_came_to_us_for_school_busted_at-4.html
Girl who came to U.S. for school busted at illegal sweatshop
Leticia Clemente dreamed of learning English in an American school when she left her family's corn farm in Mexico seven months ago, headed for a cramped Queens apartment.
Instead, the 16-year-old girl wound up working 10-hour days in a waterfront factory, sewing labels onto knockoff NFL, Polo, Izod and FUBU gear - for $50 a day.
She was the youngest of the 11 workers arrested in last week's NYPD raid at the College Point factory - a bust experts call the first of its kind in New York.
"She came here with the idea that she was going to study and work," said Flavio Chino, 30, her older sister's brother-in-law. "Where we come from, we don't have work. We cultivate the land, but we get just enough to feed ourselves."
She faces up to a year in prison if convicted and relatives fear the girl - who is here illegally - will be deported.
"We wouldn't want her taken from us," Chino said. "She came here to try to provide for her little brothers."
Her bosses had different dreams.
Jung Ryu and his wife, Ji Young Ryu, the Korean couple who owned the bootleg business, lived comfortably in a $1.5 million home in Melville, L.I.
They had $500,000 in accounts when they were were arrested on felony charges of trademark counterfeiting and possession of forgery devices, prosecutors said. Each faces up to 15 years behind bars.
Leticia's 50-hour weeks far exceed the 28-hour workweeks allowed under child labor laws - and her hours kept her from going to school, her relatives said.
She, like all the workers at the factory, were being paid below minimum wage, police said.
"Street information" aroused the attention of NYPD Detective Robert Zee, who began investigating the factory more than three weeks ago, prosecutors said.
Cops seized three tractor-trailers, embroidery machines and up to $4 million worth of knockoffs.
Jung Ryu, 40, owner of "Too You" and "Solutions USA," operated a similar factory in Korea, but decided to bring the operation to the U.S. in 2005 because customs kept seizing his shipments, cops said.
His lawyer declined to comment, and Ryu's wife, also 40, could not be reached. Jung Ryu was also wanted by the Korean government for counterfeiting.
Prosecutors said the workers were aware they were breaking the law, but Frank Bari, Letitia's lawyer, called her a victim, not a criminal.
"She should be moved to family court on the grounds of child exploitation," Bari said. "She's a victim and needs more protection from the system than to be prosecuted by the system."
Leticia was released without bail on a misdemeanor charge 35 hours after being arrested.
"She told me to come and get her out of there," said her sister, Maricela Clemente, 22. "She was desperate."
Alan Drewsen, head of the International Trademark Association, called the "homegrown factory" unusual since most bootleg clothing factories are overseas, yet he wasn't surprised a 16-year-old girl would be working there.
"In general, counterfeiting is no mom-and-pop operation. It is organized crime," he said. "There are issues of child labor in a lot of these plants around the world." With Nicole Bode and Ethan Rouen
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