Laura Althouse worked in Agriprocessors HR department and was in charge of…
… payroll.
The Des Moines Register reports:
Agriprocessors employee to change plea to guilty
BY GRANT SCHULTE
A human resources employee at Agriprocessors Inc. will plead guilty Wednesday of playing a role in the hiring and harboring of illegal immigrants in Postville, according to an online court docket.
Laura Althouse is scheduled to change her not guilty plea at a U.S. District Court hearing in Cedar Rapids, the docket shows.
The 38-year-old was charged in September with aiding and abetting document fraud, aiding and abetting aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to harbor undocumented aliens. She pleaded not guilty later that month.
Details of the plea deal were unavailable. Lawyers for Althouse did not return phone calls late today. Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, said he could not comment beyond the information in the public record.
Althouse also was one of five high-level Agriprocessors employees charged with 9,311 state child-labor violations. The charges came four months after federal agents conducted one of the largest single-site immigration raids in U.S history at the kosher meat-processing plant and detained 389 illegal immigrant workers.
Prosecutors allege that Althouse, of Postville, helped the illegal immigrant workers complete new applications with phony identities one day before the bust.
Althouse, who oversaw the company’s payroll, allegedly knew that many of the employees were illegal and were reapplying under different names.
The only other high-level Agriprocessors employee to face federal charges is Karina Freund, who worked as a Spanish translator in the human resources department. Freund, of Fayette, has pleaded not guilty.
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Iowa Charges as a PDF download.
[Hat Tip: state of the Jews.]