Envoy’s Companion Accused of Holding Immigrants in Slavery

The female companion of a ranking Thai diplomat was accused in a federal indictment Wednesday of holding two illegal immigrants from Thailand as indentured servants for more than six years at her San Fernando Valley home.

During that time, Supawan “Sonya” Veerapol, 52, was said to have forced the immigrants, both women, to work 18 hours a day at her home and restaurant while withholding their wages, denying them urgent medical and dental care, censoring their mail and threatening harm to their families back home if they tried to escape.

Supawan, who lives in Woodland Hills, vehemently denied the charges, claiming that the two women were her friends whom she allowed to stay with her for free and that she gave them money to shop and presents of gold every New Year’s Day and on their birthdays.

“I gave them gold, money, whatever they needed,” she said. “Not like a salary, not like a worker, it is like a family.”

Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Gennaco, who prosecuted the infamous El Monte sweatshop case, said this case “is potentially El Monte revisited.”

Supawan, identified in a government affidavit as the “common-law wife” of Thailand’s ambassador to Sweden and connected to other influential Thai officials, was arrested last week and released on $500,000 bond.

A grand jury indictment handed down Wednesday accused her of involuntary servitude, harboring and employing illegal immigrants and using their signatures to obtain fraudulent credit cards.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service and the FBI entered the case in January after the two women said they finally decided to flee. The women came to the Thai Community Development Center in Los Angeles on Jan. 18. After listening to their harrowing story, social workers there called federal authorities.

Supawan contended that a business rival trying to ruin her offered the women $200,000 each if they would leave and make charges against her. She said the women were lured by the money because they are relatively poor and would like money so they could buy property and bring their children from Thailand to the United States.

In interviews with INS Agent Philip Bonner, who speaks fluent Thai, the women, Thonglim Khamphiranon, 42, and Somkhit Yindiphot, 58, gave similar accounts of their experience.

Both said they were smuggled into the United States. Thonglim arrived in 1991, disguised as a member of a group of 30 Thai government tourism officials. Somkhit said she was escorted from Thailand by Supawan, who instructed her to say she was a domestic worker for the Thai ambassador to Kenya if U.S. immigration officials asked questions.

After their arrival here, the women said, Supawan seized their passports. Bonner said this was meant to inspire fear, because in Thailand all citizens are required to show national identification cards to police whenever requested.

Under Supawan’s control, the two women worked from 6 a.m. to midnight seven days a week, they told Bonner. Their duties ranged from baby-sitting her children to washing her Mercedes-Benz. During the afternoon and evening, both women worked at Supawan’s Thai restaurant in the San Fernando Valley.

Supawan said she and the two women were friends who often went shopping together, to restaurants in Chinatown and to Las Vegas. She said the women never worked long hours and that they were not her employees. The women left in January, Supawan said, after she told them that she couldn’t afford to look after both of them, that she “only needed one.”

The women also told authorities they knew of nine other Thai nationals who were smuggled into the United States to work for Supawan.

Supawan is scheduled to be arraigned April 13. If convicted of the charges, she could be imprisoned for up to 11 years. The U.S. attorney’s office said the INS and FBI investigation is continuing.