Alleged mistreatment of migrant workers nets felony charges for Minnesota farmer

A central Minnesota dairy farmer is facing felony wage theft and racketeering charges over allegations that he underpaid and mistreated his immigrant workers.

In a criminal complaint filed Monday, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison alleges that Keith Lawrence Schaefer of Richmond, Minn., routinely withheld pay, including overtime, from at least 18 workers in violation of the state’s 2019 wage theft law.

Schaefer, 57, the owner of Evergreen Acres Dairy, also allegedly forced his workers to live in overcrowded housing infested with bedbugs and cockroaches and threatened to kill two employees when they complained.

One employee, identified in the complaint as N.G.C., began working for Evergreen at age 15. The teen worked “upwards of 84 hours per week” for $12 per hour, and Evergreen “consistently failed to pay N.G.C. overtime.” The company allegedly charged the teen $75 every two weeks to live in a small house, which he shared with 10 other workers, including his father.

N.G.C. quit Evergreen after Schaefer attempted “to strike him in the face with a sharpened pencil.” A supervisor allegedly withheld the teen’s final paycheck, for about 168 hours of work, because he did not provide two weeks’ notice before leaving.

Schaefer allegedly told N.G.C.’s father, identified in court documents as R.G.F., to “go back to Mexico,” when he confronted Schaefer about the incident. Prosecutors allege that Schaefer stole about $3,000 in wages from R.G.F. when he quit.

According to the criminal complaint, Schaefer also threatened to kill employees R.R.L. and H.H.C. and threatened to contact immigration authorities and have them deported.

In a civil suit last year, Ellison said that many of Evergreen’s employees are from the Oaxaca region of Mexico and are not authorized to work in the United States. They primarily speak the Indigenous Zapotec language, with Spanish as their second language and little or no English. The lawsuit alleged that Evergreen “used the vulnerabilities of its unauthorized workforce to withhold large sums of earned wages from its employees.”

Ellison estimated that Schaefer owed his workers back pay of at least $3 million. In October, Schaefer settled the case for $250,000. Evergreen employed at least 238 workers between January of 2020 and the time the Attorney General’s Office sued the company four years later. Two-thirds quit or were fired, according to the civil complaint.

Court records do not list a defense attorney for Schaefer. MPR News left a voicemail message at a number listed for him and also contacted an attorney who represented Schaefer in the civil case.

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