TRAVERSE CITY -- Three operators of a nationwide janitorial service staffed "almost exclusively" with illegal immigrants lived a life of luxury in Florida while their employees toiled at businesses around the country, including the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa.
But now all three sit in federal prison, their assets seized and divided between the law enforcement agencies that helped investigate and prosecute them. Grand Traverse sheriff's officials received nearly $700,000 of those assets, federal authorities said Monday.
"What started as a local illegal alien case in Grand Traverse County became a national federal prosecution that dismantled a company that employed a thousand illegal aliens across the United States," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagen Frank, who added the amount is "a fair-share allocation of that forfeited money."
Frank and other officials said the sheriff's department is receiving the largest single share of $3.6 million in seized assets. The department and county aren't yet sure how it will be spent, Sheriff Tom Bensley said.
"We're in the process of working through that and finding out where the money needs to go," he said. "We would hope that the county allows us a lot of leeway in spending this money; it originated here, and it's supposed to be used for law enforcement purposes."
The windfall stems from an investigation into Rosenbaum-Cunningham International, Inc., which provided cleaning services to the Grand Traverse Resort & Spa in Acme between June 1997 and March 2006.
Sheriff's officials began a probe in 2005 after a locally based state employee who was caught selling Social Security numbers and other documents to illegal immigrants led investigators to the resort, officials said.
The investigation "spiderwebbed" across the country, officials said, ultimately leading to the arrest of hundreds of illegals and the prosecution of the company's owners.
Richard M. Rosenbaum, Edward Scott Cunningham and Christina A. Flocken, all of Florida, were sentenced in federal court last year on various criminal charges, including fraud and harboring illegal aliens.
Rosenbaum was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, Cunningham to four years and three months and Flocken to two years and six months.
The resort cooperated with, and was never a target of, federal authorities' investigation, Frank said.
