DOJ Case Summary: U.S. v. Lee
Kil Soo Lee owned and operated the Daewoosa garment factory in American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States. Lee recruited over 200 workers from China, Vietnam, and American Samoa to work at the factory. Some workers were recruited through state-owned labor export companies in Vietnam, where they paid fees of $3,600 to $8,000 to gain employment and risked retaliation if deported. Many were forced to sign contracts obligating them to pay an additional $5,000 if they did not work for at least three years. These figures amounted to several decades of salary at a comparable job in these workers' native countries.
Once the workers began working at the garment factory, Lee and his managers controlled most aspects of their lives, including when and whether they could leave the compound, eat, speak to others, or be paid. The compound itself was walled, fenced-in, padlocked, gated, and secured by guards. Lee subjected the workers to extremely poor living conditions, including imprisonment, starvation, deportation threats, and communal dormitories infested with rats and roaches. When the workers complained and escaped to beg for food from local residents, Lee and his men retaliated by using arrests, deportations, food deprivation, and brutal physical beatings. Officials from American Samoa initially investigated, but Lee blocked them by threatening to deport, and actually deporting, anyone who cooperated.
As time went on, supervisors and guards increased their beatings of the workers. In November 2000, faced with a looming deadline, Lee ordered his guards to beat anyone who did not follow orders. One guard recalls Lee saying, "if they die, I will be responsible" after instructing him to beat the Vietnamese workers. The violence quickly escalated as the guards beat the workers with pipes, resulting in what some of the workers described as a bloodbath. One worker was beaten so badly she lost an eye.
On March 23, 2001, Lee was arrested on a federal warrant issued by the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii. The Complaint and Affidavit filed in support of the warrant alleged that Lee violated 18 U.S.C. 1584 (involuntary servitude) and 18 U.S.C. 1589 (forced labor).
On August 30, 2001, a federal grand jury returned a 22-count indictment. Lee was charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of workers (18 U.S.C. 241), seventeen counts of involuntary servitude (18 U.S.C. 1584), one count of extortion (18 U.S.C. 1951), one count of money laundering (18 U.S.C. 1956), one count of making a false statement to a financial institution (18 U.S.C. 1014), and one count of bribery (18 U.S.C. 215).
The federal trial started on October 22, 2002, and lasted four months. Thirty-six witnesses testified for the government, including twenty-one abused workers. During the trial, the government dismissed two of the involuntary servitude charges and the false statement to a bank official charge.
On February 21, 2003, Lee was convicted on 14 of the 18 remaining counts: one count of conspiring to violate the civil rights of workers, eleven counts of involuntary servitude, one count of extortion, and one count of money laundering.
On June 22, 2005, Kil Soo Lee was sentenced to 40 years in prison. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.