New York–On Friday, March 22, 2019, following a three-week trial, a federal jury in Brooklyn returned a guilty verdict on all five counts against Dan Zhong, the head of U.S. operations of Chinese Liaoning Rilin Construction (Group) Co. Ltd. (also known as China Rilin) and U.S.-based subsidiaries, including U.S. Rilin, who was formerly a diplomat of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The counts of conviction were conspiracy to provide forced labor, providing and benefitting from forced labor, concealing passports and immigration documents in connection with forced labor (also known as document servitude), conspiracy to commit alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit visa fraud.
The jury also found as a sentencing enhancement that Zhong engaged in the alien smuggling for commercial gain. Today, the jury separately concluded that six properties where the forced labor victims worked, including a high rise building in midtown Manhattan and a mansion on Long Island, are forfeitable. Zhong’s co-defendant in the indictment, Landong Wang, is a fugitive, believed to be in the PRC.
Zhong faces up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The evidence at trial established that Zhong’s company performed construction work on a variety of PRC government facilities in the United States, including the Permanent Mission of the PRC to the United Nations, the Embassy of the PRC to the United States, and PRC Consulates General in the United States (collectively, the PRC Facilities).
Initially, Zhong, and his co-conspirators required workers to turn over substantial “security deposits,” including the deeds to their family homes that were subject to forfeiture if they refused to work as a key element of “debt bondage” contracts the workers signed. Once in the United States, the workers also had to surrender their passports to the conspirators. The workers were forced to put in 14-hour days, seven days a week, for years without receiving any pay. Twenty or more workers were housed in one and two-family houses in Jersey City, New Jersey.
Inspections of some of these houses revealed numerous fire code violations, as well as illegal locks to prevent the workers from escaping. Through this scheme, Zhong and his co-conspirators attempted to prevent escape by the workers, at times using violent force. Several workers testified about their families being threatened and forced out of their homes in the PRC by Rilin. One worker testified that after escaping and being re-captured, he was warned that his legs would be broken if he again tried to escape.
More recently, Zhong and his co-conspirators abused the legal process in the PRC by photographing a worker and his wife in front of a pile of cash totaling RMB1 million belonging to Rilin and then obtaining from a PRC court an enforcement order against the worker’s wife for RMB1 million after the worker escaped.
Although the visa applications prepared for the workers provided that the workers would work only at PRC diplomatic facilities, the evidence at trial established that Zhong and his co-conspirators forced them to work on private construction projects, including a commercial building in midtown Manhattan and private residences in Queens and elsewhere on Long Island. Zhong also used these workers as personal servants, preparing meals, chauffeuring him, and performing yard work.
