Aug. 26—Federal agents began serving search warrants and making arrests Wednesday pertaining to an alleged racket headed by a Joplin food company owner accused of supplying Mexican restaurants in Missouri and Kansas with undocumented workers.

Jose Luis Bravo, 51, of Claremore, Oklahoma, who owns Specialty Food Distribution in Joplin, is named as the ringleader of the alleged racketeering conspiracy in a sealed indictment handed up by a federal grand jury Aug. 10 in U.S. District Court in Kansas City and made public Wednesday.

The 64-count indictment names 19 defendants in all, including Jose Guadalupe Razo, 51, of Carl Junction, the president of the Joplin company; Anthony Edward Doll, 43, its chief financial officer, and Miguel Tarin-Martinez, 42, its controller, both of Joplin; and Antonio Martinez-Munoz, 44, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a sales manager for the company.

The indictment alleges that the defendants were involved in an organized criminal enterprise from July 2003 to Aug. 10 of this year that involved smuggling of Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadoran nationals into the country and the harboring of them in the Four-State Area.

Bravo and his Specialty Food executives created a network of restaurants throughout the Midwest that were staffed with these workers and avoided paying appropriate state and federal payroll taxes, overtime wages and workers compensation with respect to their labor.

Among those named in the indictment are eight current or former managers of restaurants in Springfield, Lebanon, West Plains, Willow Springs, St. Robert and Butler in Missouri, and in Overland Park, Great Bend and Augusta in Kansas.

The Homeland Security Investigations probe that led to the indictments began a few years ago when the Kansas Department of Labor reported allegations of undocumented workers being employed at Bravos Mexican Grill in Overland Park.

An inspection in July 2018 found that 14 of 17 employees of the restaurant whose forms were checked were not authorized workers. Another inspection the following year identified eight undocumented workers, five of whom had been identified as ineligible in the prior inspection.

An inspection of 10 restaurants in Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma in June 2019 found unauthorized workers at all of them, with 68% of those audited proving to be undocumented, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

Nine more restaurants associated with the defendants were inspected in September 2019 with similar findings. Those businesses included the El Charro restaurants in Joplin, Neosho and Pittsburg and the Cantina Bravo Grille in Webb City.

Jose Bravo owns the Bravo Group of restaurants that includes the El Charro, El Charrito, Playa Azul, Itza, Cantina Bravo and El Chango restaurants and had a financial interest in other restaurants, which he purportedly arranged to staff with workers smuggled into the U.S. He helped obtain lodging and transportation for them on the way to the restaurants and provided them with fraudulent documentation that allowed them to keep working in the U.S., according to the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City.

Razo is accused of employing unauthorized workers at Specialty Foods as salesmen and warehouse workers and allegedly "directed other employees to limit" their exposure to immigration inspections, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

The indictment alleges that in addition to the smuggling and harboring of undocumented workers, defendants contributed to the alleged racketeering by creating fraudulent documents, misusing visas, shielding unauthorized employees from detection, laundering money and making false statements to immigration authorities and law enforcement officials.

Others named in the indictment in addition to Bravo and his four Specialty Food officials are:

—Eusebio Ramirez-Ceja, 50, of Mountain Home, Arkansas, a Mexican national who is a manager of several El Charro restaurants in Missouri and Arkansas and Plaza Azul restaurants in Kansas.

—Oscar Adrian Molina-Angulo, 38, a Mexican national and manager of the El Charro restaurant in Butler.

—Rodrigo Manrique Razo, 58, a U.S. citizen from Great Bend.

—Alejandro Castillo-Ramirez, 39, a Mexican national and manager of the El Charro restaurant in Augusta.

—Juan Carlos Palma-Cedeno, 36, a Mexican national residing in Claremore.

—Ramon Moreno-Hernandez, 39, a Mexican national residing in Nevada.

—Jose Luis Lopez-Valdez, 41, a U.S. citizen residing in West Plains and manager of the El Charro restaurant there and the Cantina Bravo in St. Robert.

—Lorenzo Castro-Manzanarez, 39, a Mexican national residing in St. Robert and also managing the Cantina Bravo there.

—Jaime Ramirez-Caja, 42, a Mexican national residing in Lebanon and manager of the El Charro restaurants there and in Springfield.

—Jose Luis Rodriguez-Valerio, 57, a U.S. citizen now residing in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and formerly the manager of the Bravos Mexican Grill in Overland Park.

—Veronica Razo De Lara, 46, a U.S. citizen and manager of Maria's Mexican Grill in Great Bend.

—Edgar Perez-Perez, age not available, a Guatemalan national residing in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

—Bernardo Rivas-Gomez, 48, a Guatemalan national residing in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

—Daniel Rivas-Carrillo, 23, a Guatemalan national residing in Elizabeth City.

All of the defendants except Rivas-Gomez and Rivas-Carrillo are charged with taking part in the racketeering conspiracy. Rivas-Gomez and Rivas-Carrillo are each charged with one count of use of an unlawfully obtained document and one count of false representation of a Social Security number.