A new lawsuit filed on Thursday, June 19 alleges that the Cheesecake Factory at 2500 West Moreland Road in Willow Grove (Upper Moreland Township) gave immigrant employees fraudulent work authorization papers, Bloomberg Law reported.

Five Mexican plaintiffs, each of whom are Pennsylvania residents, are claiming that the restaurant chain and related corporate entities hired undocumented workers to abuse them through forced labor “for its own financial benefit.”

The restaurant “became a cottage industry of fraud and coercion,” the workers allege. Defendants include current and former supervisors and unnamed private entities.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs were urged to pay a man in the restaurant’s parking lot $100-$180 for Permanent Resident Cards and Social Security Cards, which turned out to be fraudulent. They also allege they were unpaid for extra work hours, and that managers “constantly” threatened to report them to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, among other complaints.

The full lawsuit can be found here.

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