Couple pleads guilty in forced labor case involving Guatemalan family

The owners of a restaurant and janitorial company in Shasta Lake have taken a plea deal in a case that charged them with luring a family from Guatemala to serve as forced laborers and earlier kidnapping a 13-year-old girl from her Las Vegas, Nevada, home.

Nery A. Martinez Vasquez and his wife, Maura N. Martinez, both 53, pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit forced labor and could face a prison term of up to 20 years and fines of $250,000. The couple also agreed to pay $300,000 in restitution, and Senior U.S. District Judge William B. Shubb set sentencing for Nov. 8.

The couple originally was charged in a June 2019 indictment in federal court in Sacramento with conspiracy to commit forced labor and other counts. Prosecutors alleged they enticed a relative in Guatemala to bring her two minor daughters to the United States in 2016 with promises of providing them a better life and educational opportunities.

Instead, the couple forced the three — who are not identified by name — to work through February 2018 and threatened them with arrest if they went outside unaccompanied or tried to attend school, court documents say.

“The defendants unlawfully employed Person One and her older daughter, Person Two, at their restaurant and cleaning service and required them to work upwards of 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for meager pay, far below minimum wage,” court documents say. “The defendants further required Person Three, Person One’s younger daughter, to work several hours a day, seven days a week, at the restaurant for no pay.”

The couple operated two businesses: a restaurant called Latino’s and Redding Carpet Cleaning & Janitorial Services, which provided services to car dealerships and other firms in the Shasta Lake area, court papers say.

The couple sent $2,780 to Guatemala in August 2016 for the mother to purchase passports and visas for the family, then sent $2,359 in September 2016 to pay for round-trip airplane tickets, court documents say.

Nery Martinez Vasquez picked the three up at San Francisco International Airport on Sept. 12, 2016, and drove them to his Shasta Lake home, where his wife told the mother not to buy a cellphone because that could lead to immigration officials finding her and arresting her, court documents say.

Maura Martinez also allegedly told her that “her daughters could not attend school in Shasta Lake because immigration authorities were visiting area schools to look for undocumented children to arrest and deport,” court papers say.

By January 2017, the mother said she wanted to return to her home country with her daughters, but Nery Martinez Vasquez told her she owed the couple more than $12,000 and would have to work for them for another 16 months to repay them, court papers say.

Months later, they were forced to live in a trailer in the couple’s backyard with no heat, air conditioning or running water, and the mother was forced “to eat leftover scraps of food,” court papers say.

Nery Martinez Vasquez also was accused of striking the children with sticks, including one inscribed with the child’s nickname and the slogan, “What goes up, must go down,” court papers say.

The couple pleaded not guilty to the original charges and were headed to trial in the case Sept. 21 when prosecutors added additional charges last June accusing them of conspiring to kidnap a 13-yearold girl who was the halfsister of Maura Martinez, court papers say. The couple picked the girl up from her Las Vegas home in January 1997 during her winter break from school and promised to provide her with “presents, pocket money and more freedom” and return her in about a week, court papers say.

Instead, the girl was locked in a room in the couple’s home — told, “You’re not leaving here,” — and was forced to cook and clean for them and work at the cleaning service seven days a week without pay, court papers say.

Once, when the girl tried to run away, Nery Martinez and Maura Martinez “punished her by forcing her to eat hot peppers,” court papers say.