'Godfather' sentenced for aid to illegal immigrants

RALEIGH -- A man prosecutors called the "godfather" of Wake County's illegal Ukrainian community was sentenced Wednesday to one year in prison for harboring as many as two dozen illegal immigrants employed at his multimillion-dollar janitorial business.

About 30 supporters, mostly from Ukraine, filled one side of a federal courtroom in Raleigh to watch the sentencing hearing for Petro Sandulyak, who pleaded guilty in August to harboring illegal immigrants and falsifying immigration documents.

The case shed light on what Assistant U.S. Attorney John Bowler termed an "egregious fraud" that was "mushrooming in size."

Sandulyak's attorneys, though, said their client came to America with $17 in his pocket, built a business in Raleigh and was targeted by authorities simply for trying to help others from his homeland.

"He harbored these people only because he let them use his address when he knew they didn't live there," said Michael S. Petty, an attorney who represented Sandulyak.

U.S. District Judge James Dever III sentenced Sandulyak to prison and ordered him to pay a $500,000 fine. At least $1.5 million in additional assets have been frozen and will be forfeited, Bowler said.

"I want to apologize to the court," Sandulyak told Dever in a thick accent.

His wife, Olga Sandulyak, was taken into custody Wednesday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and faces deportation to Ukraine on charges of visa fraud.

Petty and attorney Dan Boyce said the case has shut down Nata Janitorial, the cleaning service that Sandulyak operated out of 8470 Garvey Drive in Raleigh. An affidavit by Tony Bell, a special agent with the U.S. State Department, described Nata as the principal janitorial contractor for Kmart and Kroger on the East Coast.

According to court documents, about 50 people worked for Nata, but Sandulyak's lawyers said the number was closer to 100, most of whom worked overnight cleaning offices for $8 per hour. "They were sort of an invisible community because they were working these nontraditional hours," Petty said. "When we were waking up, they were going to bed."

According to the affidavit, more than 120 North Carolina driver's licenses and more than 180 vehicle registrations had been issued to "what appear to be Ukrainian names" using either the company's address or Sandulyak's home address, 8704 Green Cliff Court.

When Sandulyak was arrested in March, he had employed illegal Ukrainian immigrants for five years, helped at least one falsify an identification document, and helped others obtain residences and cars, court documents show.

In one typical case, an immigrant, Vasyl Melnetchuk, also known as Oleksandr Persunov, used a fictitious Raleigh address and counterfeit U.S. visa to apply for a North Carolina identification card, according to the affidavit, which said Melnetchuk came to the United States through Canada for the sole purpose of working for Nata Janitorial.

Boyce and Petty said that their client didn't know the immigrants were illegal and that Bowler exaggerated the number of immigrants that Sandulyak had helped.

Petty said many came searching for a better life. Ukraine is bouncing back after eight straight years of sharp economic decline from the early to late 1990s, during which the standard of living for most citizens declined more than 50 percent, according to the State Department's online analysis.

In the Ukraine, Petty said, Sandulyak became known as someone to whom immigrants could turn for help. "He said they came to him with all of their problems," Petty said, "and he felt it was his duty to help them."

After the hearing, Sundulyak's supporters huddled outside the courtroom, and began speaking in their native language.

Soon, Sundulyak will face deportation proceedings. If ordered to return to Ukraine, his two children -- a son at Appalachian State University and a daughter in high school -- would be left in the United States.

"Parents make their children to a certain extent," said Beatrice Lund, a friend living in Raleigh. "With two children as nice as he has, he can't be a bad person."