Utah company accused of labor trafficking says evidence was collected using false statements

WEST BOUNTIFUL, Utah — The owner of a general contracting company accused of labor trafficking is arguing that the evidence collected against him and his partners should be thrown out, claiming the state’s lead investigator made false statements and left out important facts to obtain search warrants.

Rudy Lars Larsen, 35, of Bountiful, the founder of Rubicon Contracting LLC, is facing nine felony charges of aggravated human trafficking, engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity and money laundering.

Larsen and six other executive members at Rubicon are accused of recruiting about 150 people from Mexico to work for the company using H-2B visas. But once in Utah, charging documents allege the victims were paid very little, forced to live in deplorable housing provided by Rubicon while also being forced to pay rent, and were threatened with deportation.

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An attorney representing the business has called the allegations “outrageous and inflammatory.”

On Wednesday, Larsen and his attorney filed a motion in Third District Court requesting that the presiding judge “void the search warrants in this case, order the suppression and return of all evidence and assets seized pursuant to those warrants and hold an evidentiary hearing,” also known as a “Franks hearing.”

A Franks hearing, named after a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a case out of Delaware, is used when one side believes search warrants served during an investigation that was used to collect evidence contain false statements or significant omissions and the warrants were approved by a judge based on inaccurate information.

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