NJ Couple Charged By Feds With Making Slaves Of Illegals

A South Jersey couple forced a pair of undocumented immigrants into slavery by threatening to expose them, federal authorities charged.

Both victims were abused and had their passports and visas confiscated, federal authorities charged.
Photo Credit: *abbeyburnstein (morguefile.com/p/1066324)*

Jerry DeMarco

02/22/2022 5:25 p.m.

Bolaji Bolarinwa, 47, physically abused both victims while threatening to turn them in if they didn't comply, U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger and Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a joint statement.

Bolarinwa "knew that both victims had entered the United States illegally and harbored them from detection for her own financial gain," it says.

She also confiscated both of their passports and visas, the statement says.

Her husband, Isiaka Bolarinwa, "participated in the scheme and financially benefitted from the victims’ forced labor," it says.

Bolaji and Isiaka Bolarinwa, both of the Burlington County town of Moorestown, were charged with forced labor and other crimes in an indictment returned by a grand jury in U.S. District Court in Camden, they said.

Sellinger and Clarke credited special agents of the FBI's Newark Field Office with the investigation leading to the indictment, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Bender of Sellinger's office in Camden and Trial Attorneys Elizabeth Hutson and Vasantha Rao of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

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