Workers at Rubicon, a landscape company that was subjected to a televised human-trafficking raid led by Trump ally and former Utah attorney general Sean Reyes, filed a federal complaint on Tuesday alleging Reyes and his office “violated the law to attack a Utah company for political purposes”.
The workers are seeking recompense after alleging that Reyes and other officials at the Utah office of the attorney general used false information to file a case against the company that caused enormous damage but was later dismissed.
The suit follows a similar action by Rubicon and its parent company, which is seeking $1bn in damages and alleges officials “conspired to manufacture bogus criminal charges to falsely inflate the public perception of the severity of human trafficking in Utah”.
Reyes is a longtime Trump ally. During Trump’s first term, he was considered to head the Federal Trade Commission. In 2020, he praised Trump at the Republican National Convention as a “warrior against human trafficking”, served as Utah co-chair for Trump’s re-election campaign and was reportedly encouraged by Trump to run for Senate in 2024.
On 20 November 2023, officials with the Utah attorney general office’s Secure strike force raided Rubicon’s offices, accompanied by a local Fox News affiliate crew, and charged the company with more than 50 crimes related to human trafficking.
The lawsuits allege none of the crimes or allegations were true, but were filed under false pretenses days after the Utah legislature approved an audit of Reyes’s office amid questions about his ties to Tim Ballard, the founder of an anti-trafficking organization Operation Underground Railroad (OUR). Several women are suing Ballard over sexual assault allegations, though Ballard has denied the allegations and the Salt Lake City district attorney declined to file criminal charges.
“It was known and foreseeable that when government agents submitted materially false and misleading affidavits, and then invited the news media to film the raid, that the businesses employing Utah citizens would be crippled and their employees would suffer serious financial harm,” the lawsuit filed by workers said.
The lawsuit alleges the raid was conducted after the audit of Reyes and his ties to Ballard.
The charges against Rubicon were dismissed in 2024 by the attorney general’s office after a judge found they were filed prematurely and many of the warrants were obtained through false information.
Dario Benitez, an employee at Rubicon and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said he was in “disbelief” when the raid and charges were filed.
“Rubicon workers were hit very hard,” Benitez said. “The company was a very fast-growing business and never had any layoffs. Because of the actions of the Utah [attorney general’s office], the company had to do four different rounds of layoffs. Some of those employees laid off still have not found work, others struggled to find new jobs. Employees who were able to keep their jobs suffered pay reductions, including loss of bonuses and significant salary reductions. To date, salaries and bonuses have not been restored.”
Benitez noted because of the raid, the company lost over 50% of its contracts, resulting in layoffs or reduced hours, forcing workers to get second jobs to make ends meet.
“The goal of this filing is to correct the record and us as individuals to move forward with our lives,” added Scott Bennion, an employee at Scandia, Rubicon’s parent company, in a press release on the lawsuit. “When accusations are made without the evidence to support them, the impact does not simply disappear. Restoring accuracy is part of restoring trust.”
The Utah attorney general’s office and Reyes did not respond to multiple requests for comment. They had declined to comment on the initial lawsuit filed by Rubicon and its parent company.
