Boss plotted to kill employee who reported immigrant labor scheme in Georgia, feds say
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Eliud Montoya was shot to death outside his Georgia home two days after he reported his boss for exploiting immigrant workers at the tree service company where they worked, according to federal court documents.
Nearly five years later, his boss has pleaded guilty to helping plan the slaying.
Prosecutors said 53-year-old Pablo Rangel-Rubio arranged to have Montoya killed after the 41-year-old naturalized citizen reported him to federal authorities for allegedly exploiting immigrant workers who entered the country illegally by stealing a portion of their wages, ultimately netting himself and others approximately $3.5 million.
Rangel-Rubio took a plea bargain in the Southern District of Georgia on Monday, March 28, and now faces 50 years in federal prison.
“Pablo Rangel-Rubio was responsible for employing at least 100 illegal aliens to work for a tree service, skimming from their paychecks to further fatten his wallet, and then helping arrange the murder of a man who exposed the scheme,” U.S. Attorney David H. Estes said in a news release. “The substantial prison sentence from this plea will hold him accountable for those crimes.”
Rangel-Rubio is in federal custody and could not be reached for comment. Defense attorneys representing him did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on March 29.
Prosecutors said Rangel-Rubio is a citizen of Mexico who lived in the U.S. illegally and worked for Wolf Tree, a company that had a contract with Georgia Power to maintain and trim trees surrounding power lines in the Savannah area. Wolf Tree is a subsidiary of The Davey Tree Expert Company, a national tree care corporation headquartered in Ohio.
Erika Schoenberger, spokesperson for Wolf Tree, told McClatchy News in a statement on March 30 that the company has cooperated with the government’s investigation.
“We are committed to compliance with laws and regulations, and integrity is a cornerstone value on which our foundation is built,” Schoenberger said. “We have controls in place when hiring employees to ensure we only hire individuals authorized to work in the United States and strictly prohibit any retaliation against anyone who makes a complaint. We are deeply disturbed by the sophisticated criminal enterprise that was described in court this week and that was carefully designed to escape detection by the company and authorities.”
Skimming wages, bogus paychecks
Rangel-Rubio was a supervisor for Wolf Tree in Savannah, prosecutors said. As such, he had the authority to hire employees, sign off on time sheets and submit payroll information.
He lived in nearby Rincon, Georgia, on what prosecutors described as a “compound.”
For nearly a decade beginning in 2007, Rangel-Rubio used his position to hire workers who were in the U.S. without permission, prosecutors said. He is accused of providing them with the names and social security numbers of U.S. citizens to conceal their work status from Wolf Tree.
The immigrants’ paychecks were made out to the individuals whose identities they were using, meaning Rangel-Rubio had to cash the checks on their behalf and pay them with cash, according to court documents.
But prosecutors said he often withheld a cut of their pay or wrote bogus checks to nonexistent employees, which he then had deposited into bank accounts he controlled.
Together with his brother, 45-year-old Juan Rangel-Rubio, and another man, 52-year-old Higinio Perez-Bravo, the trio stole more than $3.5 million through the scheme, the government said. None of the men were reportedly in the U.S. legally.
Juan Rangel-Rubio and Perez-Bravo have also been charged and are awaiting trial.
Murder-for-hire plot
Montoya became a U.S. citizen in 2009 and lived in Garden City, Georgia. He worked on a crew trimming trees near utility lines, according to court documents, and his coworkers often called him “General.”
Prosecutors said Montoya first tried to report the exploitation of immigrant workers to Wolf Tree in April 2017, but the complaint ended up in the hands of Rangel-Rubio. His boss then had the complaint read aloud to all of his coworkers in front of Montoya, court filings state.
Several months later on Aug. 17, 2017, Montoya reportedly took his complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency tasked with safeguarding anti-discrimination laws in the workplace.
He told the EEOC about Rangel-Rubio’s alleged scheme, saying the immigrant workers were not always paid for the hours they worked and were allowed to drive work trucks without valid licenses. Montoya also said workplace accidents weren’t being handled correctly because of the residency status of the employees.
Two days later, he was shot dead.
Prosecutors said Rangel-Rubio knew Montoya was trying to report them and started conducting surveillance at his house “to determine Mr. Montoya’s schedule and pattern of activity.” On Aug. 19, Perez-Bravo dropped off the younger Rangel-Rubio near Montoya’s house, court documents state, and Juan Rangel-Rubio shot Montoya.
Rangel-Rubio was accused of paying Perez-Bravo at least $26,000 for his role in the alleged murder-for-hire plot.
A grand jury indicted the three men in December 2018 on charges ranging from conspiring to harbor illegal aliens to conspiring to commit a murder for hire. Detainers issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement prevented them from being released on bond after their arrest.
As part of his plea agreement, Rangel-Rubio copped to charges of conspiring to harbor an illegal alien, conspiring to commit money laundering, money laundering and aiding and abetting the retaliation against a witness.
His defense attorneys negotiated a federal prison sentence of 600 months, or 50 years. Rangel-Rubio will also be ordered to forfeit the 26.62-acre residential compound in Rincon where he lived.
This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 11:25 AM with the headline "Boss plotted to kill employee who reported immigrant labor scheme in Georgia, feds say."
