Woman Loses Mansion for Employing Illegal
Upholding an Albany woman’s conviction for harboring an illegal alien, the 2nd Circuit ordered her to forfeit her 34-room mansion on a bluff overlooking the Mohawk River.
Annie George, who wanted her 2013 conviction overturned, cited a decision later that year by the 2nd Circuit that she said more clearly spelled out the meaning of “harboring” than the judge did at her trial. She also contended that forfeiture was too harsh a penalty.
George, also known as Annie Kolath and Sajimol George, was accused of harboring Valsamma Mathai, also a native of India, who came to the U.S. on a visa to live in New York City and work for a designated employee of the United Nations.
Mathai became an illegal alien when she left that position to begin working for George and her husband in 2005 as a live-in domestic to care for the couple’s six children.
She worked in three homes for the Georges, the last being the mansion known as Llenroc in the wealthy rural hamlet of Rexford, located about 20 miles northwest of Albany.
More: Courthouse News Service