By STEVE LeBLANC
BOSTON (AP) — The proprietor of two Boston-area pizza outlets convicted of pressured labor for utilizing bodily violence and threats of reprisal or deportation in opposition to workers residing within the nation illegally has been sentenced to greater than eight years in jail.
Stavros Papantoniadis, 49, of Westwood — the proprietor of Stash’s Pizza, a Massachusetts pizzeria chain — was sentenced Friday in federal court docket to 102 months in jail, one 12 months of supervised launch and ordered to pay a $35,000 fantastic.
Papantoniadis pressured or tried to power six victims — 5 males and one girl — to work for him and adjust to extreme office calls for by means of violent bodily abuse; threats of violence and severe hurt; and repeated threats to report the victims to immigration authorities for deportation, based on prosecutors.
In June, a jury convicted Papantoniadis of three counts of pressured labor and three counts of tried pressured labor. Papantoniadis has remained in custody since his arrest in March 2023.
A lawyer for Papantoniadis stated he’s pursuing a brand new trial and an enchantment.
“Although the judge saw fit to sentence him slightly beneath the guidelines, we are disappointed in the length of the sentence,” Carmine Lepore stated in an e-mail. “The sentencing guidelines applicable to this case are more appropriate for human traffickers and sexual servitude defendants.”
Appearing United States Legal professional Joshua Levy stated Papantoniadis was pushed by greed to prey on his employees.
“Labor trafficking exploits the vulnerable through fear and intimidation, all in pursuit of the almighty buck. That is what Stavros Papantoniadis did when he violated the rights of the people working in his restaurants,” Levy stated.
“He deliberately hired foreign nationals who lacked authorization to work in the United States and then turned their lack of immigration status against them, threatening them with deportation and violence to keep them under his control,” he added.
Papantoniadis thinly staffed his pizza outlets, and intentionally employed employees with out immigration standing to work behind the scenes, for 14 or extra hours per day and as many as seven days per week, investigators stated.
To regulate the undocumented employees, he made them imagine that he would bodily hurt them or have them deported and monitored them with surveillance cameras. When Papantoniadis realized that one sufferer deliberate to stop, he choked him, inflicting that sufferer to flee the pizza store.
When one other employee tried to go away and drive away from certainly one of Papantoniadis’ pizza outlets, Papantoniadis chased the sufferer down Route 1 in Norwood, Massachusetts, and falsely reported the sufferer to the native police to strain the sufferer to return to work on the pizza store, prosecutors stated.
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