MARTINEZ — While they were offering the public all-you-can-eat deals on pot stickers, sesame balls and egg rolls, the owners of a Bay Area Chinese restaurant chain were allegedly hiding a sinister secret.
Behind closed doors, according to authorities, the former owners and managers of Golden Dragon Buffet in Brentwood, New Dragon Buffet in San Leandro, Golden Wok Buffet in Roseville and Kokyo Sushi Buffet in Hayward were saving money by failing to pay their workers minimum wage. State investigators estimate they committed $4.5 million in wage theft from 2009-2013, and cheated California out of another $2 million in taxes.
In December, a Contra Costa grand jury indicted eight of Golden Dragon’s owners and managers — Brandon Quang, Yu Chen, Rongdi Zheng, Guo Cai Feng, Feng Gu, Lin Jiang, Zhou Xian Chen and Shao Rong Zhang — on 28 charges, including conspiracy, wage theft and workers compensation fraud. That same month, authorities raided four locations connected to the buffet chain, but Quang avoided arrest and fled the country. So did Feng and Jiang. All three are believed to be in China.
The other five defendants have agreed to plead guilty to some of the charges, and prosecutors have asked for sentences ranging from three to six years in state prison. Judge Charles “Ben” Burch is expected to decide on a sentence Friday afternoon.
The restaurants have since taken on new ownership, but former workers who testified before the grand jury described being housed in crowded, racially segregated dorms, and being bused to work 12-hour shifts six days a week without adequate breaks.
The chain’s owners recruited workers, mostly recent immigrants, from an employment agency in Southern California. When they got to the Bay Area, some were paid less than $6 per hour, according to prosecutors. When it became known that some of the workers were cooperating with police, one of the owners allegedly kicked them out and threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
State labor officials say it is considered the biggest wage theft case in Contra Costa County’s history, but in the bigger picture, it’s just a drop in the bucket.
“I think that wage theft is one of the most serious threats to our safety and communities in California,” state Labor Commissioner Julie Su said in an interview last year. “I think there’s a sense that workers aren’t going to complain; that not only are investigators not going to do inspections but also that employees aren’t going to come forward.”
Su and others are trying to change that. Prosecutors in the Golden Dragon case credit state investigator Donna Chen with earning the trust of workers at the buffet restaurant who later came forward and testified before the grand jury. The workers’ identities were protected. One described living in a garage with 14 others and working 12 hours a day at the Kokyo Sushi Buffet restaurant in Hayward.
“The area we were living in was exclusively for Latinos,” the worker said in grand jury testimony. “And then in the other house is where all the Chinese … servers and everybody else was.”
The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, at 1:30 p.m. in Department 23 of the A.F. Bray Courthouse in Martinez.
