A cannabis farm owner, who trapped three migrant workers on an isolated property in Northern California while withholding their pay and leaving them stranded for months, has received a sentence of less than a year in jail.
Georgi Antonov Tonev, a 45-year-old from Los Angeles, was sentenced to 320 days in jail on Thursday after being found guilty of several offenses related to three Spanish-speaking migrants. These included false imprisonment, felony grand theft of wages, and illegal possession of cannabis for sale, according to the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office.
The ordeal began in 2025 when a Mexican migrant named Javier Escamilla-Garcia, while working in Tennessee, came across what seemed like a lucrative opportunity offered by Tonev: $3,500 a month along with free housing and meals on his cannabis farm.
Escamilla-Garcia managed to save enough money to travel to Humboldt County, where he was later joined by two other workers who had been promised the same steady job.
However, authorities revealed that the men found themselves trapped at Tonev’s Showers Pass Farm, which is about two hours from his residence in Bridgeville.
The workers were confined behind a locked gate with no key and were warned that Tonev was watching them via surveillance cameras.
The District Attorney mentioned, “All three workers were trapped at the farm and were reminded that they were not allowed to leave unless they walked.”
With no English skills and no transportation, the workers were effectively isolated without any means to reach town or access money. Eventually, flooding made their situation even worse.
“Food was delivered sporadically and no safe drinking water was supplied,” the DA explained. This lack of provisions led to medical issues for two of the men requiring professional care.
Eventually, with no payment for their work, two of the migrants decided to leave, leaving Escamilla-Garcia behind, without a vehicle or cash. Tonev promised him that if he worked through the trimming season, he would pay him once the cannabis was sold on the black market.
But Escamilla-Garcia remained alone on the farm for five months, and by February 2026, with heavy snowfall beginning, he realized his situation had become dire after enduring ten months without pay.
Feeling desperate, he reached out to the Mexican Consulate through Facebook Messenger, which then notified the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department. Rescue efforts were initiated, and he was located.
Judge Steven Steward, before incarcerating Tonev, criticized him for his actions, referring to them as “a profound imbalance of power.”
“Tonev controlled their wages, living conditions, and access to basic necessities. He abused that power,” Steward stated, emphasizing that the seriousness of Tonev’s actions couldn’t be measured merely by the monetary loss incurred by the workers.
Alongside the 320-day jail time, Tonev was also sentenced to two years of felony probation, with a three-year-and-four-month prison term suspended. He was ordered to pay all back wages to the three victims, with the DA seeking over $120,000 in restitution on their behalf.
