SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME

This brilliant scheme really makes this Massachusetts couple look really bad! I mean who wouldn't want to get away with paying their housekeeper $35 a month? I pay mine almost $35 an hour. It was the whole scheme that got this couple into trouble, though.

You see, a miserly couple from the Boston area paid their housekeeper only $35 a month for more than 13 years of service and it looks like they might be spared some prison time. Martha and Richard Smalanskas from Harvard, Massachusetts, somehow avoided doing time after pleading guilty to the mistreatment of their immigrant housekeeper, who they illegally smuggled into the U.S. That's right! I said smuggled!

The couple, who had three children, forced the Bolivian woman to work 24-7 between 1997 and 2011. They recruited the young lady while she was only 16-years-old and they were living in the South American country for work. They forged documents to make it appear she was their relative when they moved back to the U.S. Um, tell me if I'm wrong, but does anyone else sense that this might sound more like a kidnapping case than a smuggling in an immigrant case? I mean the girl was 16-years-old. Then again, she might've come willingly, which throws my theory out the window. Anyway, once in America, they took the girl's passport and made her work six days a week from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m., which totaled 84 hours per week. 

The Smalanskas got away with paying this poor girl only $2,500 for 13 years and four months of work. Are you kidding me? The couple appeared before a federal court this past Wednesday and authorities determined that they owed the young lady roughly $301,000, if they were to apply minimum wages for 13 years and four months. The court is forcing the Smalanskas to pay their victim $150,000 in compensation. The couple will also serve a year of probation. Luckily for them, the charge of harboring an illegal immigrant was dismissed. They will be sentenced on April 2. The victim has been removed from the home in May of 2011 and her whereabouts are currently unknown. 

That is simply out of control! I hate comparing it to this, but this sounds like modern day slavery without the whipping and the shackles. They found this young girl in Bolivia. They bring her back to the States to work for them 84 hours a week and only paid her $35 a week. We don't know if there was any physical abuse, but for 13 years, how did this young girl put up with that? Did she have any contact with the outside other than this family? Wouldn't someone advise her to leave this family because she was being taken advantage of? To me, this sounds like modern day slavery and this couple should be put in jail or pay the girl what they really owe her.....$301,000!