YAVAPAI COUNTY, AZ (AZFamily) — Four people have been indicted after a federal labor practices investigation over several years in two different states came to a head this week.
The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office said its deputies, Homeland Security and multiple other federal agencies raided Colt Grill locations in Arizona and Alabama on Tuesday as part of a money laundering and labor exploitation probe. Arizona’s Family sister station WALA reported that the restaurant’s Alabama location was also raided.
On Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney General’s Office for the District of Arizona announced indictments of four people: Robert and Brenda Clouston, both 61 years old, of northern Arizona, along with Luis Pedro Rogel-Jaimes, 33, and Iris Romero-Molina, 29, who are both Mexican nationals illegally present in the U.S. and residing in Cottonwood.
The federal indictment alleges that the Cloustons, who operate four Colt Grill locations in Arizona and one in Alabama, and Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina organized a scheme where they created a cleaning company, R&R AZ Cleaning, that then operated as a staffing company for Colt Grill restaurants. Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina allegedly then went to find and hire undocumented workers, whom they paid below minimum wage and did not compensate for overtime. The indictment says the Cloustons, Rogel-Jaimes and Romero-Molina all had financial gain from the plan and did not pay proper employment taxes…