CALIFORNIA
A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment last week adding the charges of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and kidnapping to the previous charges of conspiracy to commit forced labor, forced labor, conspiracy to harbor aliens, and harboring aliens.
According to court documents, Nery A. Martinez Vasquez, 52, and his wife Maura N. Martinez, 52, both of Shasta Lake, were naturalized United States citizens, originally from Guatemala.
The defendants owned and operated Latino’s, a restaurant, and Redding Carpet Cleaning & Janitorial Services, a cleaning company that serviced various businesses, including multiple car dealerships, in the Shasta Lake area.
The original indictment alleges that between September 2016 and February 2018, the defendants conspired to bring a Guatemalan woman and her two minor daughters to the U.S.
The defendants used temporary visitor visas, harbored them after their visas expired, and forced them to work long hours at a restaurant and cleaning service for minimal to no pay, according to the indictment.
The indictment further alleges that the defendants did the following:
- Imposed a debt on the victims to prevent them from returning to Guatemala
- Subjected them to physical, psychological, and verbal abuse
- Threatened them with arrest
- Separated the woman from her daughters, all to compel their labor.
In addition, according to the superseding indictment, in January 1997, the defendants conspired to kidnap a 13-year-old girl.
They made promises to the girl’s parents that they would bring her back in a week and told the girl that they would give her presents and money.
They then drove her from her home in Las Vegas to their home in Redding, California, and held her against her will and the will of her parents for almost two years. They forced the girl to clean car dealerships and provide other labor, working long hours seven days a week without pay.
Nery A. Martinez Vasquez is also alleged to have routinely sexually molested and raped the girl.
The Los Angeles Times reported last year that a Guatemalan family, unnamed in court records, was promised a better life in the U.S., with a livable wage and education for the young girls, who were born in 2001 and 2008, prosecutors said.
Instead, the three were made to live in a trailer in the backyard of the Martinez home with no heating, air conditioning or running water, the indictment states. Prosecutors said the family was told they could not get a cellphone and the girls could not go to school because immigration authorities would find them and deport them.
When the mother expressed a desire in January 2017 to return to Guatemala, the couple told her she owed them $12,000 — though they paid only $5,139 for the family’s travel arrangements — and could not go back home until she worked another 16 months for them, according to the indictment.
If convicted of all the charges, the defendants are facing up to life in prison.