Three Calgary restaurant owners are facing jail time for defrauding vulnerable Indian cooks out of $44,000 in fake "immigration fees" while subjecting them to slave-like conditions and threats of deportation.

Manikandan Kasinathan, Chandramohan Marjak, and Mary Roche must now serve 90-day weekend sentences, repay the stolen money, and face 18 months probation — a rare win against the rampant exploitation fuelled by the Liberal-backed Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program.

These men are accused of luring cooks from India on employer-tied permits between 2017 and 2020, promising legitimate jobs. Instead, they demanded up to $24,000 each for fake "government fees" related to Labour Market Impact Assessments they required for hiring foreigners over Canadians.

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In reality, employers only pay $1,000 for these assessments, but the victims were threatened with deportation if they didn't comply.

🍁 Christmas miracle? Tim Hortons backpedals in Grimsby after public outrage

The Ontario location reversed its decision to lay off long-time employees after intense backlash just days before Christmas.

What was shaping up to be a grim time for dozens of Tim Hortons employees… pic.twitter.com/iaHXuRcySb

— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) December 23, 2025

One worker, Parthiban Ramalingam, toiled 12-14-hour days, six days a week, just to pay off his $24,000 "debt." On paydays, it is said that Kasinathan drove him to the bank, took cash handouts, and then ordered him straight to the restaurant.

Others lived in substandard housing owned by the bosses, crammed into bedrooms, paying rent while enduring verbal and physical abuse. One victim described feeling like a "slave."

Justice Sandra Mah rightly called out the lies as the owners claimed payments were for rent, flights, or loans, but the evidence proved fraud over $5,000.

This isn't an isolated incident.

Rebel News has exposed rampant TFW abuse: fraud, wage theft, sham marriages for residency, and exploitation, displacing Canadians while suppressing wages.

This former Tim Hortons employee says that not only are franchisee owners capitalizing on temporary foreign workers to get subsidized by the feds, but the new employees often speak Hindi instead of either one of our official languages AND make special booger cheese pic.twitter.com/XJShSyBTJa

— Tamara Ugolini 🇨🇦 (@TamaraUgo) November 27, 2025

Calls to the worker abuse tip line nearly doubled in 2024, hitting record highs, as inspections plummeted.

Shout out to this BASED OPP Constable

Tim Hortons in Picton, Ont. tried to trespass me while investigating the staggering allegations of immigration fraud at the location where a MINOR was offered $20K for an arranged marriage with her managers brother

He was having NONE of it pic.twitter.com/532JK1NiVj

— Tamara Ugolini 🇨🇦 (@TamaraUgo) September 30, 2025

Years ago, the UN slammed the program as a breeding "contemporary forms of slavery" due to tied permits trapping workers.

The Liberals knew of these rampant abuses in the TFW program as early as 2021, including employers dodging promised wages, paying cash under the table to expired-permit workers, coercing unpaid overtime, and forcing kickbacks for LMIA fees. This damning report was largely ignored for four years, while the program(s) exploded and further exploitation of vulnerable migrants was enabled.