Woman is indicted for alleged illegal recruitment

A woman who operates a manpower agency on Saipan has been indicted in federal court for allegedly offering fake jobs on Saipan in exchange for a fee.

Arlene Hart, also known as Arlene Silva, president of Curtwill Corp. in Koblerville, was charged with two counts of mail fraud and three counts of fraud in foreign labor contracting.

The indictment includes a notice of criminal forfeiture.

Saipan Tribune has yet to verify whether Arlene Hart is the same one who, in 2014, pleaded guilty to theft by unlawful taking or disposition as part of a plea deal. In that case, Hart stole $6,831 from her then-employer, Ecosource Insurance. Hart was originally sentenced to 11 months in prison but a Superior Court judge agreed to reduce her sentence five months later. She was released on Aug. 31, 2014, instead of Feb. 28, 2015.

According to the indictment filed on Thursday, Hart, an officer of Curtwill Corp., which was doing business as Curtwill Enterprises, hired alien workers from the Philippines, promising that the company would provide them work in the CNMI for 40 hours per week at a rate of $6.05 per hour, “holiday pay and bonuses,” employer-arranged housing, medical and dental care, and transportation to and from the worksite.

Recruiters in the Philippines identified and recruited aliens to work for Curtwill and facilitated Hart’s contact with these alien workers.

Hart then spoke personally or by telephone with the alien workers, reassuring them that Curtwill’s offer of employment was legitimate.

Hart and the recruiters then told the alien workers they had to pay up to 65,000 in Philippine pesos (about $1,380), in addition to a $750 processing fee, for the filing of I-129CW petitions on their behalf.

Under the CW-1 program, or CNMI-Only Transitional Worker Program, it is the employer who must file an I-129CW petition if he or she wishes to hire an alien worker.

After their consular interviews and based in part upon the workers’ representations that Curtwill was to be their employer, and the one-page, fraudulent employment contracts submitted to USCIS by Curtwill, the workers were issued visas to travel to the CNMI.

Soon after the workers arrived in the CNMI, Hart informed the workers that Curtwill would not be their employer, and there was no job available for them. Curtwill told the workers they had to wait until work was available, or find their own jobs.

The alien workers had difficulty finding work, or found work for only brief periods. Due to the gaps in their employment, the workers earned far less than what they had been promised by Curtwill.

If the workers were able to find legitimate employers on their own, Curtwill required that the secondary employer pay the workers’ wages to Curtwill, instead of directly to the worker.

Curtwill then took deductions from the workers’ pay for application fees, and renewal petitions, before paying the workers, in violation of federal and CNMI laws and regulations.