The Fate of the US Pizza Shop Owner Who Exploited Undocumented Workers Like Slaves

Illegal Immigrants Employed at Two Pizza Shops
Frequent Assaults and Verbal Abuse... 14-Hour Workdays
102-Month Prison Sentence Issued by Federal Court

The owner of a pizza restaurant who employed illegal immigrants as workers and treated them like slaves was sentenced to eight years in prison.

A stock photo unrelated to the article content

On the 29th, the Associated Press reported that Stavros Papantoniadis (49), who operates two pizza chain stores in Massachusetts, was recently sentenced by a federal court to 102 months in prison, one year of probation, and fined $35,000.

Papantoniadis employed six illegal immigrants?five men and one woman?and frequently subjected them to physical abuse and mistreatment. He exploited their illegal status by threatening to report them to immigration authorities and forced them to work more than 14 hours a day, up to seven days a week.

When he learned that an employee intended to quit, he even strangled the person, who eventually escaped. When another employee tried to flee by car, Papantoniadis chased after them by car and falsely reported to local police, forcing the employee to return to work.

Earlier, in June, a jury found Papantoniadis guilty of three counts of forced labor and three counts of attempted forced labor. Papantoniadis’s lawyer stated that "the sentence is excessive" and is pursuing a retrial and appeal.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.