5 Former Ives Laborers Get Checks for Back Wages : Somis: Mexican workers victimized at flower ranch are paid between $2,300 and $4,700. About $1.25 million has been ordered disbursed among hundreds of employees.

More than three years after a Somis flower rancher was charged with exploiting hundreds of Mexican laborers, five former employees received the first installment Monday on $1.25 million that has been ordered paid in back wages.

Checks ranging from $2,300 to $4,700 were issued in Los Angeles to five workers from Oxnard. Checks for the remaining 377 laborers who worked at Edwin M. Ives’ Somis compound will be issued when the employees are located.

The amount of the checks will range from $577 to $13,620, depending on the length of employment.

Ives, 57, of Los Angeles was sentenced to three years in prison Sept. 13 after pleading guilty to corporate racketeering and numerous labor and immigration violations.

He agreed to pay $1.5 million in restitution to workers, an amount believed to be the stiffest fine ever levied in a U.S. immigration case. Of that, prosecutors agreed to deduct $225,000, an amount that is at least equal to his payments in a civil settlement with 29 workers and state income taxes on the back wages, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Carol L. Gillam.

In exchange for the guilty plea and restitution, prosecutors agreed to dismiss extortion and slavery charges that had drawn widespread attention when Ives was indicted in 1990.

“Rather than have the funds exhausted in continued litigation and defense of the case, we were able to work out an agreement that actually got money back to the abused workers,” said U.S. Atty. Terree A. Bowers. “That’s a very satisfactory result.”

Prosecutors said the case is significant because it will send a stern message to employers who abuse vulnerable workers or hire illegal immigrants. Bowers called the case historic since it is the first federal conviction for racketeering in a civil rights case.

Lee Pliscou, a California Rural Legal Assistance lawyer who represented 29 workers in the civil case against Ives, said the money given out Monday represents only a small part of what is owed the workers.

“I don’t think the time to celebrate is yet upon us,” he said. “Certainly the workers who don’t have their checks are not ready to celebrate.”

Pliscou said he hopes the government will try aggressively to find all of the workers once employed by Ives.

“Everything else is just speechmaking until the people actually get their money,” he said.

To the handful of workers who received their checks today, the moment seemed a long time coming. A sixth worker, who officials had not expected, also appeared. They said he would receive his check at a later time.

Dressed in cowboy boots, jeans and work shirts, the men stood silently as government officials spoke.

Speaking through an interpreter, most said they planned to deposit the checks in bank accounts Monday afternoon and weigh carefully how they would spend it.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to get the check today, so I’m in shock,” said Erasto Angeles, 47, of Oxnard. “I didn’t know the date, but I always knew the day would come.”

Serafin Carrillo, 59, said he hopes to eventually use the money to help his wife and daughter become U.S. citizens.

“Sometimes I had doubts that we would get to this day, that we would see this money,” said Carrillo, who rents a room in Oxnard and earns a daily wage that is equivalent to what he was paid weekly by Ives.

The workers also told of being rousted at 2 or 3 a.m. and being forced to work 16-hour days, six days a week. They said they were shielded from the outside world and virtually imprisoned on Ives’ 50-acre compound, which was surrounded by high fences, locked gates and secured by attack dogs inside.

“We worked a lot of hours and we couldn’t go out of the ranch,” Carrillo said.

The Oxnard workers also said they were forced to buy food, blankets and other necessities at inflated prices from Ives’ company store.

Prices ranged from $3.50 for a six-pack of soda to $2.50 for two dozen tortillas. Workers were also required to purchase tools necessary for their work on the ranch.

“It was the classical, old company-store routine,” said Bowers.

Ives, who grew eucalyptus leaves, baby’s breath flowers and other ornamental plants, has admitted harboring and transporting illegal immigrants. Prosecutors allege that he recruited workers from rural villages in southern Mexico and smuggled them into the country between 1987 and 1989.

Most of the workers have returned to Mexico, and federal officials plan to travel there to disburse the rest of the back wages. Workers who are in the United States illegally will have to claim their wages through Mexican authorities, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Alfredo X. Jarrin.