A defendant who worked for Fayette Janitorial Services will be sentenced on September 17 after pleading guilty to obtaining fake identifications for undocumented workers, including children.
John Bernard Mitchum, a Fayette Janitorial Services division manager, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Fayette Janitorial Services is a contract cleaning service for a Perdue Farms meat and poultry slaughterhouse.
The U.S. Department of Labor found 24 children as young as 13 working at facilities operated by Perdue in Virginia and Seaboard Foods in Iowa for Fayette’s cleaning services. The Nashville-based company paid $649,304 to settle the civil action brought by DOL.
Federal law prohibits child labor in slaughterhouses.
Perdue’s Accomack County, VA, poultry-processing plant was under investigation by Homeland Security as early as 2020. Additional federal interest occurred in 2022 when the arm of a 14-year-old employee was seriously injured while cleaning.
Homeland found that 339 of 353 Fayette employees at Perdue’s Accomack facility were likely using fake identifications, and many were also attending the local Arcadia High School.
Mitchum was producing fake driver’s licenses, birth certificates and Social Security cards needed to keep the undocumented child worker scam going. Identities were sometimes reused if they passed muster in a practice known as “refining."
Perdue has terminated its contract with Fayette.
