PENNSYLVANIA — In the latest case of Mehmet Oz being a complete fraud that no one can trust, new coverage from Business Insider reveals that his wife’s business, of which he is a shareholder and which has donated to his Senate campaign, faced the largest fine in ICE history for systematically hiring unauthorized workers. The news broke less than 24 hours after Oz tweeted that he would “fight to end illegal immigration“.
See highlights from the piece below and read the full article here.
- In a Sunday tweet, Mehmet Oz vowed to “fight to end illegal immigration” should he be elected to the Senate, a promise that helped resurface the fact that his family’s business faced a record-breaking fine for hiring unauthorized workers.
- The heart surgeon turned TV personality turned Donald Trump-endorsed politician — better known as Dr. Oz — quickly faced backlash from social-media users who called him a liar and shared stories related to a fine levied against a business started by his wife’s grandfather.
- The tree-pruning company Asplundh Tree Experts Co., a business for which Oz is listed as a shareholder on regulatory documents, settled with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in 2017 after a six-year investigation and audit revealed a systemic effort to hire unauthorized workers.
- “Asplundh Tree Experts, Co., one of the largest privately-held companies in the United States, headquartered in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, (‘Asplundh’), pleaded guilty today to unlawfully employing aliens,” an ICE press release about the settlement said, “in connection with a scheme in which the highest levels of Asplundh management remained willfully blind while lower level managers hired and rehired employees they knew to be ineligible to work in the United States.”
- The company, which has donated $12,000 to Oz’s Senate campaign, was sentenced to pay forfeiture in the amount of $80 million and an additional $15 million “to satisfy civil claims arising out of their failure to comply with immigration law,” an amount that represented the largest payment ever levied in an immigration case, according to the press release.