Charges allege fraud with H-2b workers

by Ken Quintanilla

Guam - A federal indictment was handed down against Ramachandran Vadivallo. The owner of Transrama Guam (dba, "The Mechanic"), was indicted on multiple counts of mail fraud, visa fraud, money laundering, fraud in foreign labor containing and notice of forfeiture.

Vadivallo who has several aliases and his business partner Joseph Pablo, have been the subject of a federal investigation for the last two years. He's accused of hiring H-2b workers for various projects on Guam, lying about the jobs they would be doing and severely underpaying them.

The investigation stemmed from complaints that were reported to the national human trafficking resource center alleging that Vadavillo confiscated the workers' passport and visas and paid them as little as 2.50 an hour.

Vadivallo is scheduled to answer to the charges next week Wednesday.

Vadivallo's alleged business partner, Joseph Pablo, was indicted by a federal grand jury. He's charged with making a false statement. Pablo is accused of lying to department of homeland security officers back in July 2010, saying he had never entered the Transrama H2-b workers barracks. 

As we reported the feds have been conducting an investigation into alien H2-b workers at Transrama.