Illegal immigrant labor in Florida Keys hotels, restaurants led to an $8.4 million fraud

Omar Rodríguez Ortiz, David J. Neal
·3 min read
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Florida Keys bars, hotels and restaurants hired around 100 undocumented immigrants provided by a pair of Key West black market labor brokers who got sentenced to federal prison on Monday.

Eka Samadashvili and Davit Pavliashvili are hardly the first labor brokers to send illegal workers to Florida Keys hospitality businesses looking for servers and cleaners. And, they committed the same sin as other busted Keys black market labor brokers: they cut out the government entirely by not withholding federal income, Social Security or Medicare taxes.

READ MORE: A Key West man used undocumented immigrants for work and a $3.5 million tax fraud

So, in addition to three years in prison, Samadashvili owes the government $8,473,785 after pleading guilty to conspiring to harbor aliens and induce them to remain in the United States; and, conspiring to defraud the United States.

Pavliashvili got a year and a half prison sentence and $16,925 in restitution after pleading guilty to the conspiring to harbor aliens charge and filing a false federal tax return.

Illegal workers, no taxes, plausible deniability

From January 2014 through November 2020, according to her guilty plea, Samadashvili was the bookkeeper and office manager for Paradise Hospitality Solutions LLC; Paradise Hospitality Group LLC; Paradise Hospitality Inc.; and HBSM Corp.; and PSEB Services JD. Pavliashvili’s guilty plea says he helped operate the Paradise Hospitality companies and HBSM.

The hotels, restaurants and bars paid the labor companies for workers and got staff without the hassle of making sure their workers were authorized to work in the United States and taxes got withheld. That paperwork fell to the labor companies.

“The labor staffing companies entered into written contracts and verbal agreements with hotels, bars, and restaurants in Key West and elsewhere to provide labor staffing services,” Samadashvili’s guilty plea says. “These agreements helped (her) customers attempt to disclaim responsibility for ensuring that workers were legally authorized to work in the United States and that federal employment taxes were withheld and paid over to the IRS.

“In fact, many of the labor staffing companies’ customers knew or had reason to believe that the workers provided under these agreements were not authorized to work in the United States and that federal income and employment taxes were not being withheld and paid over to the IRS.”

The labor staffing companies and their state registration information:

Paradise Hospitality Solutions, registered Feb. 9, 2014, administratively dissolved for not filing proper paperwork on Sept. 23, 2022, president, treasurer and secretary David Ganjelashvili (not criminally charged, but mentioned by initials in Samadashvili’s and Pavliashvili’s guilty pleas).

Paradise Hospitality Group, registered March 10, 2016, voluntarily dissolved on April 30, 2019, manager David Ganjelashvili.

Paradise Hospitality, registered April 24, 2018, administratively dissolved for not filing proper paperwork on Sept. 23, 2022, general manager David Ganjelashvili.

HBSM Corp., registered June 29, 2012, administratively dissolved for not filing proper paperwork on Sept. 23, 2022, president, treasurer and secretary David Ganjelashvili.

PSEB Services JD., registered Feb. 19, 2010, voluntarily dissolved on April 30, 2016, president, treasurer and secretary David Ganjelashvili.

Homeland Security Investigations and IRS-Criminal Investigation investigated the case. The prosecution was handled by Senior Litigation Counsel Christopher Clark for the Southern District of Florida; Senior Litigation Counsel Sean Beaty; and Jessica A. Kraft, Nicholas J. Schilling Jr., Matthew C. Hicks and Wilson Rae Stamm of the Justice Department’s Tax Division.