Oahu, HI, United States

United States · Oahu, HI · 2003 (location generalized to protect survivors)

This case was prosecuted by attorneys from the Criminal Section of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and was investigated by the Honolulu regional office of the FBI. The victim witness coordinator in the U.S. Attorney’s Office also assisted with the case. Kil Soo Lee was the third and last individual convicted in this case. In 2002, two of Kil Soo Lee’s co-conspirators, a manager and a garment worker, pleaded guilty to trafficking charges and were sentenced to 70 months and 51 months, respectively, in January 2004. By testifying against Lee at a federal trial in Hawaii, the factory workers who did not return to Vietnam received special "T" visas from the U.S. government. Those visas enable human trafficking victims to reside in the United States. There is concern about 90 workers who suffered abuse at the garment factory but who were later sent back to Vietnam. Many, he said, have lost their homes to loan sharks who lent them money at high interest rates to go abroad. U.S. District Judge Susan Oki Mollway on June 22 also ordered the South Korean businessman to pay $1.8 million in restitution to about 300 Vietnamese and Chinese nationals who were lured to the U.S. archipelago in the South Pacific to earn what they thought would be a steady stream of dollars.