October 11, 2024 – Feds find a million in cash while investigating staffing firm supplying Haitians to Charleroi, PA food factory

In Email/Dossier/Govt Corruption Investigations, Featured Timeline Entries by Katie Weddington

A mysterious staffing firm operating a complex van transportation network supplying low-cost Haitian labor to a Charleroi, PA-based company that operates multiple food packing plants in the area has been at the center of a federal investigation.

On Friday, local media outlet Action News revealed that federal investigators had been investigating staffing firm Prosperity Services, which supplies cheap migrant labor to Fourth Street Foods in Charleroi.

According to Action News, Fourth Street “employs 700 immigrants from 41 countries, many of them Haitians.” The migrants work on conveyor lines in massive ice boxes to slap breakfast bowls and sandwiches together under various private-label brands for big box retailers.

Here’s the bombshell from the media outlet published Friday evening:

Many of Fourth Street’s workers are actually employed by a contractor, Prosperity Services. Prosperity also transports workers in vans, which can be seen throughout Charleroi.

In court records, federal investigators said Prosperity “knowingly paid undocumented non-citizen employees with cash” and “transported and housed undocumented non-citizens for employment purposes.”

Earlier this year, the feds seized nearly $1 million in cash from Prosperity and two men affiliated with the company, including Andy Ha, the company president.

In a separate report, journalist Christopher Rufo found out…

At the center of this system in Charleroi is Fourth Street Foods, a frozen-food supplier with approximately 1,000 employees, most of whom work on the assembly line. In an exclusive interview, Chris Scott, the CEO and COO of Fourth Street Barbeque (the legal name of the firm that does business as Fourth Street Foods) explained that his company, like many factory businesses, has long relied on immigrant labor, which, he estimates, makes up about 70 percent of its workforce. The firm employs many temporary workers, and, with the arrival of the Haitians, has found a new group of laborers willing to work long days in an industrial freezer, starting at about $12 an hour.

Many of these workers are not directly employed by Fourth Street Foods. Instead, according to Scott, they are hired through staffing agencies, which pay workers about $12 an hour for entry-level food-processing roles and bill Fourth Street Foods over $16 per hour to cover their costs, including transportation and overhead. (The average wage for an entry-level food processor in Washington County was $16.42 per hour in 2023.)

Rufo uncovered other staffing companies …

According to a Haitian migrant who worked at Fourth Street and a review of video footage, three staffing agencies—Wellington Staffing Agency, Celebes Staffing Services, and Advantage Staffing Agency—are key conduits for labor in the city. None have websites, advertise their services, or appear in job listings. According to Scott, Fourth Street Foods relies on agencies to staff its contract workforce, but he declined to specify which agencies, citing nondisclosure agreements.

He continued:

A property search for David Barbe and his other business, DB Rentals LLC, shows records of more than 50 properties, many of which are concentrated on the same streets.

And continued some more:

No doubt, the situation is advantageous to David Barbe of Fourth Street Foods, who can pay $16 an hour to the agencies that employ his contract labor force, then recapture some of those wages in rent…

Fourth Street Foods owner David Barbe told the media outlet: “I don’t know anything about it.”

…

(Read more: Zero Hedge, 10/12/2024)  (Archive)