Four Washington labor contractors are scheduled to stand trial in federal court after a grand jury accused them of widespread H-2A fraud and mistreatment of farmworkers.

Francisco Rodriguez Martel, his wife Esmeralda Rodriguez, Giovanna Sierra Carrillo and Erica Cisneros, all of the Tri-Cities-based Harvest Plus, are scheduled for trial on May 11 at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington in Richland.

In October last year, a grand jury indicted them for a range of charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, forced labor and identity theft, according to the indictment. Potential penalties range from fines to five years in prison.

Between 2022 and 2024, the defendants tried to enrich themselves through forged documents, bogus job contracts and unlawfully transporting more than 500 workers, the indictment said. The charging documents said the defendants forced workers to perform nonapproved domestic labor; to work without overtime pay under extreme heat and without access to clean water and to live in overcrowded, unauthorized housing while the defendants unlawfully charged the workers for the housing.

The indictment also accuses the defendants of intimidating the workers into lying to federal investigators and of threatening to alert immigration authorities if the workers spoke out. At times, Rodriguez Martel, owner of Harvest Plus, fired a pistol in the air in front of workers, placed a gun on a table while talking to workers and instructed Mexican cartel members to intimidate families of workers who sued Harvest Plus over their conditions, the documents said.

Martel is in custody awaiting trial while the three women, all employees of Harvest Plus, were released with conditions. •