Rancher Says He Is Guilty of Smuggling Laborers : Courts: Originally charged with enslaving hundreds of illegal migrants, Edwin Mitchel Ives also admits to federal labor violations.

A Ventura County flower rancher, originally charged with enslaving hundreds of farm laborers, pleaded guilty Friday to illegally smuggling hundreds of Mexican field workers into the United States and to violating federal labor laws.

The rancher, Edwin Mitchel Ives, also agreed to pay $1.5 million in restitution to laborers who worked at his 50-acre ranch in the Ventura County community of Somis in the 1980s.

In pleading guilty to seven counts, Ives, 55, admitted to a federal judge in Los Angeles that he hired “mostly relatives of friends and neighbors of my employees . . . knowing some of them were undocumented.”

As for a charge that he violated federal minimum wage laws, Ives said “we did not have a plan” to accurately record the hours the workers put in harvesting, dyeing and bundling flowers and leaves for floral arrangements.

“Employees sometimes worked overtime without getting overtime pay,” he told U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall.

In addition, Ives’ company, Griffith-Ives Co., pleaded guilty to corporate racketeering, the federal government’s first organized crime conviction in a civil rights case.

As part of the plea-bargain, the government dropped charges against Ives of violating the 82-year-old anti-slavery statute and extortion counts which gave the case international notoriety when it surfaced two years ago.

Ives, standing next to his attorney, John S. Crouchley, spoke softly and without emotion, in making the guilty pleas. He declined to comment after the court proceedings.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol L. Gillam told a reporter the guilty plea “sends out the most powerful message we could send to employers who abuse their workers: They’ll lose everything they’ve gained.”

Ives becomes the 10th defendant in the case to plead guilty. The last defendant, the ranch manager, Pedro Pinzon, is scheduled to plead guilty next week.

Specifically, Ives pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy between 1984 and 1987 which involved smuggling workers into the country and concealing them on his ranch just north of Camarillo. He also pleaded guilty to breaking the federal minimum wage laws and of making false wage and hour reports to the U.S. Labor Department.

Finally, Ives admitted that he forced workers to buy their pruning shears from his company store and deducted the cost from their wages.

Ives faces a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison. He also faces possible fines of almost $1 million in addition to the $1.5 million restitution in the plea-bargain agreement.

If he had gone to trial and been found guilty of all charges, Ives would have faced the possibility of life imprisonment, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Alfredo X. Jarrin, who helped prosecute the case. In addition, Ives could have lost $5 million in assets, including three ranches, if he had requested a trial and his company had been found guilty of racketeering.

As part of the plea agreement, the government also dropped charges against Ives’ wife, Dolly, 48, who prosecutors said ran the ranch’s business office.

Marshall set an Aug. 3 sentencing date for Ives.

Ives’ attorney, Crouchley, said that without the slavery charge the case becomes “a routine situation that got blown out of proportion into a monster federal case. Unlawful employment of illegal workers happens every day.”

But Ives’ former farm workers, several of whom showed up in the courtroom to observe his guilty plea, said their treatment at the flower farm was horrific.

“I’ve worked all over Mexico, but I never suffered in Mexico like I suffered at this ranch,” said Juan Mendez Cruz, 35, of Oxnard, speaking through an interpreter. “I felt like a slave.”

According to government investigators, Ives’ field hands worked 16-hour days and were tightly controlled in almost a military regimen. Laborers were paid sub-minimum wages and deductions were made from their paychecks for food, clothing and other necessities which they purchased from a store on the flower ranch, investigators said.

Moreover, according to Labor Department investigator Bill Buhl, pay deductions also were made for smuggling fees, counterfeit residence cards and other illegal charges that reduced workers’ pay far below the federal minimum wage of $4.25 an hour.

About 300 of the laborers, many recruited from Indian villages in Mexico, could receive a piece of the $1.5 million restitution settlement.

“This case represents the worst kind of worker abuse and shows our firm commitment to stamping out such exploitative employment practices,” Labor Secretary Lynn Martin said in a statement.