- Joined
- Feb 11, 2005
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I don't know if it's a reliable source, so take it for it is. The journalist has clearly done her research though.
Cliffs at the bottom of post #2.
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – Last Saturday evening, I arrived at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center here on S. Yellow Springs Street, drawn by former President Donald Trump’s explosive claim in the presidential debate days earlier that migrants from Haiti are “eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people who live there.”
But in just 72 hours, I uncovered something sinister that is the real story in this town of about 58,000 locals and an estimated 15,000 migrant workers—a long-standing, hidden human trafficking network that has upended the lives of both the Haitian migrants and local residents. According to sources, with whistleblowers coming forward, FBI anti-trafficking agents and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost are investigating the allegations of human trafficking in Springfield.
What began as my efforts to track down a rumor about animal cruelty has turned into an investigation that reveals a malignant system of labor exploitation involving a local businessman, George Ten, whom Haitians and local residents call “King George,” the chief executive at First Diversity Staffing Group Inc., a Springfield company that has been the tip of the spear in the alleged trafficking operation of Haitians to the town.
While Haitians have lived in homes condemned now with an “X” on the front door, he lives in a $1.35 million mansion on Pawleys Plantation Court in a ritzy neighborhood called “Estates at Country Club of the North.”
A real estate listing shows the house features a wine cellar and other extravagances: “Over 10,000 Sf of pure elegance! Gorgeous 1st floor w/marble floored round foyer w/lighted dome, 1st floor owners suite, formal living/dining, study, Florida rm, & gourmet kitchen. 2nd floor w/3 br each w/full bath and loft area. W/O basement w/billiard room, cherry & Bubinga wood bar, media room, wine cellar, exercise, sauna, and rec rooms. 4 car attached garage. Covered veranda off back of home and large upper and lower patio w/golf course views!”
According to sources, the network has become so significant and, thus, drawn the attention of the area FBI field office and Ohio Attorney General Yost, with the whistleblowers revealing the inner secrets of this operation. According to sources, the FBI has binders of evidence documenting the properties owned by “King George” and the systematic transport of Haitian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, in dilapidated, unmarked white vans from Florida and other states. The areas of investigation include the almost 50 homes that George owns in Springfield, housing the migrants in squalid conditions, under the name of a limited liability corporation. George oversees a spider’s web of at least 10 shell corporations that I’ve discovered through court records and sources say he uses them to funnel money, property and assets, including his Audi, Mercedes and Porsche cars.
This is a story of unchecked greed and cruelty, committed not by the immigrants, but to the immigrants, with local residents of Springfield also a casualty.
As most journalists learn through experience, things are rarely as they seem. When the allegation of migrants eating cats and dogs exploded across the media, I knew there was more beneath the surface. What began as an investigation into animal cruelty quickly revealed a much darker reality—a large-scale human trafficking operation.
I arrived in Springfield from my home in Morgantown, W.V., a town much like Springfield in size and scale. I wanted to get to the bottom of this story. I came to Springfield because I felt a connection to the immigrants and the locals here, both their stories echoing my own experience growing up uniting two worlds. I moved to the U.S. with my brother when I was four years old, joining our parents as they made the difficult move in search of a better life, and when I was 10, we settled in West Virginia.
While the families around me had different identities, their ancestral stories were familiar—new immigrants from places like Italy, Germany and Ireland who came to work the coal mines. They pioneered foods like the pepperoni roll at Chico’s Bakery and survived in company towns, much like what it feels Springfield has become for the Haitian community. I honor the resilience and beauty of immigrants and small-town folks. I am doing this investigation as part of the Pearl Project, a nonprofit initiative dedicated to journalism in the public interest, named for my Wall Street Journal colleague and friend Daniel Pearl, whose Jewish parents also made a journey of immigration to the United States from Israel. Breaking typical journalism style, I will use first names in second reference because this is a story about a small town where folks are on a first name basis with each other, even “King George.”
What I discovered in Springfield is the tragic story of Haitian migrants exploited and local Springfield residents marginalized and sidelined by powerful interests in a wider and disturbing pattern of human trafficking and labor exploitation that has infiltrated Springfield since 2009. And with little recourse for the victimized and the disenfranchised.
The alleged trafficking network was orchestrated by George Ten, a local businessman who took over his family’s staffing business, First Diversity, after his father, Miguel Ten, faced legal trouble with the IRS, sources told me. I couldn’t get a hold of George but have left messages for him. Miguel answered my questions thoughtfully and in a straightforward way.
Miguel said his wife and children were born in New York, and he moved to Delaware and then Ohio to work in human resources for Dole. In 2002, Miguel said, he started First Diversity out of his home and he said that he left George the business around 2010 when he became a pastor.
“I turned it over to him because the Lord called me to be a pastor about 2010. I turned everything over to him,” said Miguel, now a pastor at Life in Christ Community Church on Sunset Street in Springfield.
The company jingle is that First Diversity is a “leader in putting Americans back to work by providing Quality Staffing Solutions.” The company has grown to have new operations, where workers from Haiti are also allegedly funneled: Washington Court House, Ohio; Lima, Ohio; Sidney, Ohio; Huber Heights, Ohio; Gastonia, N.C.; and Charlotte, N.C..
He said his son wasn’t involved in alleged human trafficking. “Well, you know, to be honest with you, this I know, the city and the companies had a shortage of people. They put pressure on not only First Diversity,” but also another employment agency, “to get employees because they didn’t have anybody to work. The companies needed people and we didn’t have enough people.”
Hispanic and Mexican laborers were illegal, he said. “The Haitians were legal.”
He never heard the nickname “King George,” he said. “This is the first time that I am hearing something like that. That is new to me.”
Around 2008, Miguel hired a local businessman, Bruce Smith, as a company executive.
Miguel said, “My son is a good smart young man. I wanted to make sure that he got his degree.” George got a master’s degree in finance, he said.
Sources say Bruce is troubled by the direction the business has taken but keeps his job as vice president and leads in negotiating contracts with employers who hire the Haitian migrants and others. Bruce couldn’t be reached for comment.
George’s wealth and lifestyle, with its fleet of luxury cars, stand in stark contrast to the lives of the migrants he allegedly exploits, many of whom live in squalid conditions.
Sources say that George put a benign face on his operation. He typically started the day around 9 a.m. with “kumbaya” circle time with employees, giving them an intense pep talk, barely breaking a smile, putting his hand into the circle for others to follow and break with a cheer, followed by everyone going to their corners to hustle jobs for migrants from Haiti. He dumped his records in cardboard banker’s boxes in the building’s basement, refusing efforts by staff to digitize his records, often paying workers with cash under the table, sources said.
When a new applicant arrived to join his own staff – not the hourly jobs at the local plants and warehouses – he would sit awkwardly in silence in a conference room with glass windows and then ask, “Tell me about yourself.”
After the applicant finished, he handed them a self-help book and sent them off with the homework assignment to read the book and report back on the steps for self-improvement the applicant would take. Only then would the applicant be hired.
Then, if a squabble ever emerged, he said, “You’re not paid enough to question me,” and handed the employee another self-help book with the instructions for self-improvement.
As I did my reporting, the stories of cats and dogs being eaten were magnified by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and, on the other side, Vice President Kamala Harris called the allegations about cats and dogs eaten a “crying shame.”
With a Democratic federal government led by President Joe Biden and a Republican state government led by Gov. Mike Dewine, an uncomfortable political reality lies below the surface for all. The rhetoric should move from dispelling or propping up the cats-and-dog story and focus on the human tragedy in Springfield. Neither the citizens nor the migrants should be the demagogues. Neither should be vilified. But rather the problem investigated and corrected – from the top.
As national media reporters descended on the streets of Springfield, I drove the side streets and E. High Street and tracked the unmarked white vans used by George and First Diversity, transporting Haitian migrants to their jobs at Dole and other companies. It only takes studying the flow of operations for a few days to see First Diversity’s business relies on the Haitian migrants. A steady flow of Haitian migrants go through the doors of First Diversity between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., sitting sometimes on the stone wall outside and walking inside with a seriousness and sometimes it seems a hopefulness. Behind the building, an empty can of ServicePro antifreeze litters the parking lot, beside a rat trap and a can of Twisted Tea on a window sill, not far from an unmarked white van.
These vans have become a familiar sight in town, with locals seeing them serviced every Sunday at Jim’s Tire and Service Center at the corner of W. Selma Road and Vine Street, advertising “The Best Priced Tread in Town!”
Through this network, George has acted as a domestic “mule” in the labor trafficking system, moving vulnerable migrant workers across state lines for economic gain. Much like drug mules, labor mules transport people to exploit them for profit, treating human beings as commodities in a multibillion-dollar industry.
In June 2019, employees of First Diversity were directed to stop hiring locals and focus on recruiting Haitian migrants, sources said. A new routine developed in town. George dispatched unmarked white vans to remote locations in Florida to bring workers from Haiti to Springfield, sources said. One worker said he paid a fee of about $50 for the ride. The scenes in the town became bizarre: I watched the driver of one white van drop a man off at a rundown house with three black trash bags filled with things.
Once they arrived in Springfield, the migrants were packed into dilapidated houses owned by one of Ten’s many companies. I have mapped 45 such properties around town, including at least three homes that were purchased on the same day, Sept. 10, 2020, for $20,000, $28,000 and $32,000. These homes are overcrowded, often shared in shifts among the migrants, some of whom had no stable place to stay and carried all their belongings in backpacks.
In the morning, drivers in the white vans would pick up the men at their homes or at the First Diversity offices at the E. High Street mansion, painted a muted tan, and deposit them at the far end of town in the distribution center, where companies like Dole Foods hired them at cheap rates.
One Haitian man I interviewed asked to be anonymous for fear of retaliation and recalled how he was picked up by a driver for one of Ten’s vans on a street corner near a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Immokalee, Florida. After the long journey to Springfield, he was dropped off at a rundown home on Rice Street, infested with cockroaches. He soon found work through First Diversity at Jefferson Industries Corporation, earning $12.50 an hour; he didn’t know how much George skimmed off his wages. The home he lived in had no working heat, and he bought an electric heater to survive the cold Ohio winter, the heater barely heating his room.
Cliffs at the bottom of post #2.
Feds and State AG Investigate an Alleged Human Trafficking Empire Run in Springfield, Ohio, for Years by ‘King George’
Dispatches from Springfield, Ohio – The story in this town is not about cats or dogs. It’s about mules. It’s a twin tragedy of migrant workers from Haiti exploited and locals from Springfield marginalized. Just about every week since 2019, First Diversity Staffing Group Inc. has shuttled vulnerable Haitian migrants in unmarked white Ford and Chevy vans from Florida to Ohio, where they are allegedly exploited for cheap labor by companies like Dole Food Company Inc. It is a secretive and sinister operation that has gone unchecked for more than five years. The mastermind behind this scheme lives in a $1.35 million mansion on Pawleys Plantation Court. His name is George Ten, but in that underworld, his nickname is "King George," because of his opulent lifestyle of luxury cars, cash handouts and fast-talk. For years, he has operated his reign of alleged exploitation openly and freely out of a former mansion on E. High Street.
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio – Last Saturday evening, I arrived at the Haitian Community Help and Support Center here on S. Yellow Springs Street, drawn by former President Donald Trump’s explosive claim in the presidential debate days earlier that migrants from Haiti are “eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people who live there.”
But in just 72 hours, I uncovered something sinister that is the real story in this town of about 58,000 locals and an estimated 15,000 migrant workers—a long-standing, hidden human trafficking network that has upended the lives of both the Haitian migrants and local residents. According to sources, with whistleblowers coming forward, FBI anti-trafficking agents and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost are investigating the allegations of human trafficking in Springfield.
What began as my efforts to track down a rumor about animal cruelty has turned into an investigation that reveals a malignant system of labor exploitation involving a local businessman, George Ten, whom Haitians and local residents call “King George,” the chief executive at First Diversity Staffing Group Inc., a Springfield company that has been the tip of the spear in the alleged trafficking operation of Haitians to the town.
While Haitians have lived in homes condemned now with an “X” on the front door, he lives in a $1.35 million mansion on Pawleys Plantation Court in a ritzy neighborhood called “Estates at Country Club of the North.”
A real estate listing shows the house features a wine cellar and other extravagances: “Over 10,000 Sf of pure elegance! Gorgeous 1st floor w/marble floored round foyer w/lighted dome, 1st floor owners suite, formal living/dining, study, Florida rm, & gourmet kitchen. 2nd floor w/3 br each w/full bath and loft area. W/O basement w/billiard room, cherry & Bubinga wood bar, media room, wine cellar, exercise, sauna, and rec rooms. 4 car attached garage. Covered veranda off back of home and large upper and lower patio w/golf course views!”
According to sources, the network has become so significant and, thus, drawn the attention of the area FBI field office and Ohio Attorney General Yost, with the whistleblowers revealing the inner secrets of this operation. According to sources, the FBI has binders of evidence documenting the properties owned by “King George” and the systematic transport of Haitian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, in dilapidated, unmarked white vans from Florida and other states. The areas of investigation include the almost 50 homes that George owns in Springfield, housing the migrants in squalid conditions, under the name of a limited liability corporation. George oversees a spider’s web of at least 10 shell corporations that I’ve discovered through court records and sources say he uses them to funnel money, property and assets, including his Audi, Mercedes and Porsche cars.
This is a story of unchecked greed and cruelty, committed not by the immigrants, but to the immigrants, with local residents of Springfield also a casualty.
As most journalists learn through experience, things are rarely as they seem. When the allegation of migrants eating cats and dogs exploded across the media, I knew there was more beneath the surface. What began as an investigation into animal cruelty quickly revealed a much darker reality—a large-scale human trafficking operation.
I arrived in Springfield from my home in Morgantown, W.V., a town much like Springfield in size and scale. I wanted to get to the bottom of this story. I came to Springfield because I felt a connection to the immigrants and the locals here, both their stories echoing my own experience growing up uniting two worlds. I moved to the U.S. with my brother when I was four years old, joining our parents as they made the difficult move in search of a better life, and when I was 10, we settled in West Virginia.
While the families around me had different identities, their ancestral stories were familiar—new immigrants from places like Italy, Germany and Ireland who came to work the coal mines. They pioneered foods like the pepperoni roll at Chico’s Bakery and survived in company towns, much like what it feels Springfield has become for the Haitian community. I honor the resilience and beauty of immigrants and small-town folks. I am doing this investigation as part of the Pearl Project, a nonprofit initiative dedicated to journalism in the public interest, named for my Wall Street Journal colleague and friend Daniel Pearl, whose Jewish parents also made a journey of immigration to the United States from Israel. Breaking typical journalism style, I will use first names in second reference because this is a story about a small town where folks are on a first name basis with each other, even “King George.”
What I discovered in Springfield is the tragic story of Haitian migrants exploited and local Springfield residents marginalized and sidelined by powerful interests in a wider and disturbing pattern of human trafficking and labor exploitation that has infiltrated Springfield since 2009. And with little recourse for the victimized and the disenfranchised.
The Rise of “King George”
The alleged trafficking network was orchestrated by George Ten, a local businessman who took over his family’s staffing business, First Diversity, after his father, Miguel Ten, faced legal trouble with the IRS, sources told me. I couldn’t get a hold of George but have left messages for him. Miguel answered my questions thoughtfully and in a straightforward way.
Miguel said his wife and children were born in New York, and he moved to Delaware and then Ohio to work in human resources for Dole. In 2002, Miguel said, he started First Diversity out of his home and he said that he left George the business around 2010 when he became a pastor.
“I turned it over to him because the Lord called me to be a pastor about 2010. I turned everything over to him,” said Miguel, now a pastor at Life in Christ Community Church on Sunset Street in Springfield.
The company jingle is that First Diversity is a “leader in putting Americans back to work by providing Quality Staffing Solutions.” The company has grown to have new operations, where workers from Haiti are also allegedly funneled: Washington Court House, Ohio; Lima, Ohio; Sidney, Ohio; Huber Heights, Ohio; Gastonia, N.C.; and Charlotte, N.C..
He said his son wasn’t involved in alleged human trafficking. “Well, you know, to be honest with you, this I know, the city and the companies had a shortage of people. They put pressure on not only First Diversity,” but also another employment agency, “to get employees because they didn’t have anybody to work. The companies needed people and we didn’t have enough people.”
Hispanic and Mexican laborers were illegal, he said. “The Haitians were legal.”
He never heard the nickname “King George,” he said. “This is the first time that I am hearing something like that. That is new to me.”
Around 2008, Miguel hired a local businessman, Bruce Smith, as a company executive.
Miguel said, “My son is a good smart young man. I wanted to make sure that he got his degree.” George got a master’s degree in finance, he said.
Sources say Bruce is troubled by the direction the business has taken but keeps his job as vice president and leads in negotiating contracts with employers who hire the Haitian migrants and others. Bruce couldn’t be reached for comment.
George’s wealth and lifestyle, with its fleet of luxury cars, stand in stark contrast to the lives of the migrants he allegedly exploits, many of whom live in squalid conditions.
Sources say that George put a benign face on his operation. He typically started the day around 9 a.m. with “kumbaya” circle time with employees, giving them an intense pep talk, barely breaking a smile, putting his hand into the circle for others to follow and break with a cheer, followed by everyone going to their corners to hustle jobs for migrants from Haiti. He dumped his records in cardboard banker’s boxes in the building’s basement, refusing efforts by staff to digitize his records, often paying workers with cash under the table, sources said.
When a new applicant arrived to join his own staff – not the hourly jobs at the local plants and warehouses – he would sit awkwardly in silence in a conference room with glass windows and then ask, “Tell me about yourself.”
After the applicant finished, he handed them a self-help book and sent them off with the homework assignment to read the book and report back on the steps for self-improvement the applicant would take. Only then would the applicant be hired.
Then, if a squabble ever emerged, he said, “You’re not paid enough to question me,” and handed the employee another self-help book with the instructions for self-improvement.
Not Cats or Dogs, but Mules
As I did my reporting, the stories of cats and dogs being eaten were magnified by Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and, on the other side, Vice President Kamala Harris called the allegations about cats and dogs eaten a “crying shame.”
With a Democratic federal government led by President Joe Biden and a Republican state government led by Gov. Mike Dewine, an uncomfortable political reality lies below the surface for all. The rhetoric should move from dispelling or propping up the cats-and-dog story and focus on the human tragedy in Springfield. Neither the citizens nor the migrants should be the demagogues. Neither should be vilified. But rather the problem investigated and corrected – from the top.
As national media reporters descended on the streets of Springfield, I drove the side streets and E. High Street and tracked the unmarked white vans used by George and First Diversity, transporting Haitian migrants to their jobs at Dole and other companies. It only takes studying the flow of operations for a few days to see First Diversity’s business relies on the Haitian migrants. A steady flow of Haitian migrants go through the doors of First Diversity between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., sitting sometimes on the stone wall outside and walking inside with a seriousness and sometimes it seems a hopefulness. Behind the building, an empty can of ServicePro antifreeze litters the parking lot, beside a rat trap and a can of Twisted Tea on a window sill, not far from an unmarked white van.
These vans have become a familiar sight in town, with locals seeing them serviced every Sunday at Jim’s Tire and Service Center at the corner of W. Selma Road and Vine Street, advertising “The Best Priced Tread in Town!”
Through this network, George has acted as a domestic “mule” in the labor trafficking system, moving vulnerable migrant workers across state lines for economic gain. Much like drug mules, labor mules transport people to exploit them for profit, treating human beings as commodities in a multibillion-dollar industry.
In June 2019, employees of First Diversity were directed to stop hiring locals and focus on recruiting Haitian migrants, sources said. A new routine developed in town. George dispatched unmarked white vans to remote locations in Florida to bring workers from Haiti to Springfield, sources said. One worker said he paid a fee of about $50 for the ride. The scenes in the town became bizarre: I watched the driver of one white van drop a man off at a rundown house with three black trash bags filled with things.
Once they arrived in Springfield, the migrants were packed into dilapidated houses owned by one of Ten’s many companies. I have mapped 45 such properties around town, including at least three homes that were purchased on the same day, Sept. 10, 2020, for $20,000, $28,000 and $32,000. These homes are overcrowded, often shared in shifts among the migrants, some of whom had no stable place to stay and carried all their belongings in backpacks.
In the morning, drivers in the white vans would pick up the men at their homes or at the First Diversity offices at the E. High Street mansion, painted a muted tan, and deposit them at the far end of town in the distribution center, where companies like Dole Foods hired them at cheap rates.
One Haitian man I interviewed asked to be anonymous for fear of retaliation and recalled how he was picked up by a driver for one of Ten’s vans on a street corner near a Winn-Dixie grocery store in Immokalee, Florida. After the long journey to Springfield, he was dropped off at a rundown home on Rice Street, infested with cockroaches. He soon found work through First Diversity at Jefferson Industries Corporation, earning $12.50 an hour; he didn’t know how much George skimmed off his wages. The home he lived in had no working heat, and he bought an electric heater to survive the cold Ohio winter, the heater barely heating his room.
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