MORAINE — In a News Center 7 I-Team exclusive, we’re investigating curious connections between the Fuyao auto glass plant and another Chinese-owned factory also raided by federal agents.
WHIO-TV teamed up with the Dayton Daily News for a months-long investigation spanning two states.
We followed a trail of money and properties connected to the company that took over the shell of the former GM plant in Moraine.
Federal agents raided Fuyao nearly two years ago, alleging many of its jobs went to workers who were in the country illegally.
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The I-Team’s lead investigative reporter John Bedell found striking similarities between two cases but very different outcomes.
In an investigation hundreds of miles away from the Miami Valley, the Feds made three arrests. But here in the Dayton area in the Fuyao case, there have been no charges, even nearly two years after the raid.
“When they first got there, they had weapons drawn,” Greg Jump recalled about the group of local and federal law enforcement officers he could see swarming a home on his block two summers ago.
Jump clearly remembers the view from inside his Miami Township living room on July 26, 2024.
“They were out there en masse,” Jump said. “Looked like it was a raid for sure.”
Jump lives just a few doors down from one of the single-family homes where federal investigators say Fuyao workers were crammed in. He said he grabbed a pair of binoculars and could see government agency acronyms coming into focus – HSI and FBI – on the backs of jackets at the end of the block. Jump said he could also see Montgomery County deputies helping at the scene.
“The people had been there probably for a couple of years before the raids happened,” Jump told the I-Team. “But what kind of piqued my interest was the fact that we saw as many as 10 people at a time coming out of the house, getting into a van, a white van, you know, just a plain van, and eight or nine people coming back in at the same time. So it was a switch. And it’s like, ‘Okay, is this place – is it being used as a dormitory?’ That’s the first thought that came to my mind.”
Jump said he still thinks about the federal investigation that led to that raid.
“We still don’t exactly know what went on, and who’s responsible, and what’s the outcome,” Jump said.
Federal agents served dozens of search warrants that day – warrants which remain sealed. So, we don’t know what they were looking for or what they seized at the Fuyao plant and 27 houses across southern Montgomery County and Butler County.
Federal prosecutors say 148 foreign workers at the plant during the raid had at least temporary legal status. But in filings in U.S. District Court in Dayton, they noted a “significant number of workers” in the U.S. illegally who stopped showing up for work in the days before the raid. Prosecutors said most were of Chinese origin.
“Our investigation is focused on allegations of financial crime, money laundering, labor exploitation, and potential human smuggling violations,” Jared Murphey, Acting Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Detroit, told reporters while standing on the Fuyao property during the raid in July 2024.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) says the “E-Z Iron Money Laundering Organization,” or MLO, included a network of Chinese businesses that recruited, hired, housed, and transported illegal workers, mostly from China.
In federal court records, the DOJ alleges that E-Z Iron provided staffing services to Fuyao.
Fuyao denies being a target of the federal investigation.
The company refused the I-Team’s request for an on-camera interview. In response to written questions from the I-Team and the Dayton Daily News, Fuyao released a statement saying, in part: “We believe Fuyao Glass America (FGA) is not the target of the ongoing government investigation and has fully cooperated with the government. We are unable to provide additional comments on an ongoing government investigation.”
Federal prosecutors say those businesses from the EZ Iron operation received more than $126 million directly from Fuyao.
“We knew when the federal government did the raid and then when they put out their news release that this was a serious matter,” Ohio Governor Mike DeWine told the I-Team in a one-on-one interview last week.
A serious matter because of the allegations and because it involves your money.
The News Center I-Team teamed up with the Dayton Daily News for a months-long investigation and found records showing Ohio, Montgomery County, and the City of Moraine gave Fuyao more than $12 million in incentives.
State records obtained and reviewed by the I-Team show Fuyao has reported complying with those agreements.
Fuyao’s statement to the I-Team also said, “FGA has fulfilled its obligations associated with the economic development incentives it has received, including those related to investment and job creation. Independent audits have confirmed FGA’s compliance with the contractual requirements of these programs. Importantly, FGA remains firmly committed to making a strong, long‑term contribution to the local economy and community. The Company currently employs more than 3,200 employees in Ohio.”
Fuyao did not answer our questions about whether those workers are Americans or from other countries.
“They’ve certainly fulfilled and almost doubled what they told us and committed to us that they were going to be doing,” Governor DeWine said. “We also have a clause that if there’s any illegal activity going on that we can claw back some of this money and take action against them. At this point, we don’t really know who is being targeted, who the Justice Department was really looking at. And so until we know that, we can’t legally take any kind of action. Whether or not this was some other independent companies, you know, could have been independent companies separate and apart from them when they didn’t know what was going on. We just don’t know at this point. So until we get something out in the open, as far as an investigation that shows us that the company itself was committing crimes, we will not and cannot take any kind of action.”
“The Ohio Tax Credit Authority previously approved Fuyao Glass America for a Job Creation Tax Credit,” Mason Waldvogel, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Development, told the I-Team. “Based on the company’s required annual reporting to the state, the company remains above its committed job and payroll metrics and is in compliance with its agreement. The State’s Job Creation Tax Credit agreements require compliance with local, state, and federal laws in the operation of the project. Should any JCTC recipient be found to have violated applicable laws, it would be a breach of the agreement and could be subject to reduction in rate or term. Because this is part of an ongoing federal investigation, I would defer to federal authorities for any findings related to this case.”
As recently as February, prosecutors trying to freeze banks accounts and seize property tied to the raid at Fuyao and those 27 homes told a judge they were seeking a court order “… pending completion of the criminal case.”
Federal prosecutors declined to comment on the Fuyao raid when the I-Team reached out last week.
“Per DOJ policy, we are not able to discuss ongoing matters,” said Jennifer Thornton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office Southern District of Ohio.
“Generally, when bad actors engage in unfair labor practices, they place profits over people,” HSI Detroit Special Agent in Charge Jared Murphey said the day of the raids in Dayton in 2024.
Investigators have not said what happened to all those foreign workers they detained two summers ago.
And the News Center 7 I-Team and Dayton Daily News found this isn’t the only case with those kinds of questions.
“We’ve identified a number of victim/witnesses,” FBI Atlanta Assistant Special Agent-In-Charge Brian Ozden said during a raid at another Chinese-owned factory in Georgia on March 26, 2025.
Just one week before the Department of Justice moved to seize property in the Fuyao case, federal agents raided another factory with more undocumented workers housed in questionable conditions in Cartersville, Ga.
“These folks today are primarily from China,” ICE Public Affairs Officer Lindsay Williams said at the time.
WHIO-TV’s sister station, WSB-TV reported on the search warrant raids at Wellmade Flooring and at least seven nearby houses in March 2025. Investigators said the workers lived in the nearby homes under harsh conditions in the community about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta.
Property records the I-Team reviewed showed the owner of one of those Georgia houses listed a mailing address in Washington Township in south Montgomery County.
No one answered the door either of the two times the I-Team visited the house recently. But property records at that home led us to another house in Miami Township, where the owner answered the door wearing a shirt with an embroidered Fuyao logo.
He said he didn’t speak English, but then said he last worked at Fuyao in 2024 and didn’t know anything about Wellmade when Bedell asked about his shirt and the Georgia company.
In the Georgia case, following that federal raid, three men were charged in state court with labor trafficking. Investigators allege they brought dozens of workers from China as cheap labor. The suspects have all denied wrongdoing. The I-Team checked online state court records in Georgia this week that show all three of their criminal cases are pending.
“I got involved after the raid and represent a number of the victims who were trafficked to work at the factory there,” Attorney Aaron Halegua told the I-Team in an interview.
Halegua is suing Wellmade for alleged civil rights violations, including poor living conditions, withholding workers’ passports, and unfair wages.
“Certainly, part of the motivation to use a staffing agency is not just to find the workers, but to sort of avoid liability for the things that might go wrong in the workplace,” Halegua said. “So usually, the factory or the company that’s using the staffing agency — you know if the workers are working 12 hours a day, six days a week and not getting paid overtime — they say, ‘Well, you know, they’re not really our employees, right? They’re the employees of the staffing agency.’”
Halegua told the I-Team one of the staffing agencies Wellmade used to recruit workers was Join-Win Consulting. And you won’t believe where we found that company’s headquarters: directly across the street from the Fuyao plant in Moraine.
The Join-Win building in south Montgomery County is vacant. And no one answered the door at another address also listed for Join-Win, less than two miles away. The staffing agency is not accused of wrongdoing in either the Ohio or Georgia case.
The I-Team found Wellmade is listed as a client for Join-Win in Wellmade’s federal bankruptcy filings. Join-Win also appears in a National Labor Relations Board filing for a 2024 case against Fuyao.
Fuyao did not answer the I-Team’s questions about Join-Win, but told us in a statement, “FGA has no relationship with Wellmade Performance Flooring in Georgia.”
The I-Team left several messages seeking comment with Wellmade’s phone number. As of the publication of this report, Wellmade has not responded.
“I think there are kind of a surprising number of similarities,” Halegua said of the allegations at Fuyao and Wellmade.
But there’s one big difference.
Wellmade has filed for bankruptcy while Fuyao continues to operate.
And there are still no charges from those raids in the Miami Valley nearly two years ago.
“This may take years to come out, I suppose,” Jump said.
But we may not have to wait much longer.
Congress has ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to submit a report about its investigation of illegal labor practices by auto glass companies tied to the Chinese government. It does not specifically name Fuyao.
That report is due next week.
This is a joint reporting effort with WHIO-TV and the Dayton Daily News.
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