Restaurateurs plead guilty to hiring undocumented workers
The owners of three popular Mexican restaurants in southern and central Maine have pleaded guilty to charges related to hiring undocumented workers there.
The Portland Press Herald reported that brothers Guillermo and Hector Fuentes could each face up to five years in federal prison and $250,000 in fines. The brothers own the Fajita Grill in Westbrook, the Cancun Mexican Restaurant in Waterville and the Cancun Mexican Restaurant II in Biddeford. They will be sentenced at a later date.
The Fuentes had been convicted in U.S. District Court in March 2013 on the charges of conspiracy to harbor undocumented aliens for profit, and aiding and abetting document fraud. But they were granted a second trial after it was found that one of the jurors had referred to them using a racial slur. The brothers agreed to waive the indictment process and plead guilty to the charges before the second trial’s scheduled date in October.
The Fuentes were arrested in 2011 after a series of investigations between 2006 and 2011 that found about 12 undocumented workers employed at the three restaurants.
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