Georgia · Cartersville, Bartow County · Crime & Courts

Cartersville, GA Forced Labor Indictment: Zhu Chen, Jiayi Chen and Jianjun Lu Charged in Federal Case

A federal grand jury indicted three men — Zhu Chen, 60, Jiayi Chen, 31, and Jianjun Lu, 55 — on charges of forced labor and conspiracy to commit forced labor connected to a flooring manufacturing plant in Cartersville, according to WSB-TV and FOX 5 Atlanta. Zhu Chen is additionally charged with alien harboring. An indictment is an allegation and nothing in it has been proven. Every description of conduct on this page is attributed to a charging document or to the officials the two newsrooms quote, and the three men are presumed innocent.

What the indictment alleges, and what it does not establish

A federal grand jury indicted 60-year-old Zhu Chen, 31-year-old Jiayi Chen and 55-year-old Jianjun Lu for conspiracy to commit forced labor and forced labor, FOX 5 Atlanta reports, attributing that to federal prosecutors. WSB-TV reports the same three men at the same three ages, indicted on charges of forced labor and conspiracy to commit forced labor, and reports that Zhu Chen was also charged with alien harboring. FOX 5 Atlanta also reports the alien harboring count against Zhu Chen.

Those are the facts two independently owned newsrooms both carry. WSB-TV is a Cox Media Group station. FOX 5 Atlanta is a FOX Television Stations newsroom. They are separate companies with separate editors, and where this page says both carry a fact, both were opened and read.

Everything else on this page about what anyone did is an allegation in a charging document, and it is labeled that way in every sentence. That is not throat-clearing. Three living, named men have been accused of a serious federal crime and have been convicted of nothing. A page that narrates the accusation as history does permanent damage that a later paragraph cannot undo.

WSB-TV reports the day. Its story states that two Cartersville men and a Chinese national were indicted Tuesday in federal court on charges related to forced labor allegations at a flooring manufacturing company in Cartersville. This page reproduces that construction rather than assigning a city of residence to any individual defendant, because the record compiled for this page does not break residency down person by person.

FOX 5 Atlanta states the legal posture in its own words: “The indictment contains allegations, and the government must prove the defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.” That sentence is the frame for this entire report.

What an indictment is, and what it is not

An indictment is an accusation voted by a grand jury. It is not a verdict, not a finding of fact, and not evidence of anything. This is the single most important standing section on this page, so it comes before the detail rather than after it.

What a federal grand jury actually does: it hears the government's evidence, in secret, without the defense present. There is no cross-examination, no defense witnesses and no judge weighing the case. The grand jury is asked only whether there is probable cause to believe an offense was committed — a threshold far below the standard a trial jury applies.

What it does not do: it does not decide guilt. It does not hear the other side. It does not resolve a conflict in the evidence. An indictment is the government's version of events, tested against a low bar, in a proceeding designed to be one-sided by rule.

So when this page says “the indictment alleges” or “prosecutors say,” those are not hedges. They are the accurate description of what exists. Nothing described below has been tested by cross-examination, ruled on by a judge, or found by any jury.

What this page will never write about these three men: that anyone was enslaved, trafficked or held captive. Those words state a conclusion as a fact. The government has alleged conduct; a court has found nothing. The distinction survives no matter how serious the allegation is — and the more serious the allegation, the more the distinction matters.

Charges also change. Counts get added, dropped, consolidated or dismissed. Cases end in acquittals, dismissals and pleas to different offenses than the ones first announced. Nothing in the record compiled for this page establishes how this case ends.

Who is charged

Zhu Chen, 60. Both newsrooms connect him to the company. WSB-TV describes him as “Wellmade Industries owner Zhu Chen, 60”. FOX 5 Atlanta writes that investigators said “Zhu Chen, who owns Wellmade Industries,” worked with the other two men. He is the only one of the three charged with alien harboring in anything cited here.

Jiayi Chen, 31. Both newsrooms carry the name and the age. WSB-TV additionally identifies him as Zhu Chen's nephew, in the phrase “his nephew, Jiayi Chen, 31”. That family relationship appears in the record compiled for this page in WSB-TV's account alone, and this page attributes it to WSB-TV every time it comes up rather than presenting it as jointly established. It is in the comparison table below for that reason.

Jianjun Lu, 55. Both newsrooms carry the name and the age. WSB-TV describes him as “Jianjun Lu, 55, a Chinese national”.

The spelling and the ages were checked character by character against both stories before this page was written. Getting a name wrong in an article about a federal criminal charge attaches the accusation to the wrong person, and there is no clean way to unwind that once it is indexed.

No other person is accused of anything on this page. No employee, no relative and no business associate is named as a participant, because the record compiled for this page names three defendants and no one else.

The charges, precisely

All three men: forced labor and conspiracy to commit forced labor. WSB-TV reports the three were “indicted on charges of forced labor and conspiracy to commit forced labor.” FOX 5 Atlanta reports the grand jury indicted the three “for conspiracy to commit forced labor and forced labor”. Two owners, same two offenses.

Zhu Chen alone: an additional alien harboring count. WSB-TV: “Zhu Chen was also charged with alien harboring.” FOX 5 Atlanta: “Zhu Chen also faces an alien harboring charge for housing workers without legal status in properties owned by the business.” The count itself is carried by both. The stated basis for it — housing in properties owned by the business — appears in the record compiled for this page in FOX 5 Atlanta's account.

Conspiracy is a separate offense from the underlying one. In federal practice, a conspiracy count charges an agreement to commit an offense; the substantive count charges the offense itself. A defendant can be convicted of one and acquitted of the other. Charging both is ordinary and says nothing about the strength of either.

The record compiled for this page does not state which code sections were charged. Neither story cites a statute number. This page therefore does not assert that any particular section appears in the indictment. Where federal law is described further down, it is described as general background about what the law says, not as a report of the counts in this case.

How the workers were allegedly recruited

Attribution first, because this is the part most likely to be repeated without it. What follows is what a charging document is described as alleging. It is not established.

WSB-TV reports: “According to the DOJ, the defendants lured Chinese nationals to work at Wellmade Industries ‘through false pretenses’ on B-1 and L-1 visas.” WSB-TV attributes that to the U.S. Justice Department.

FOX 5 Atlanta reports: “Investigators said Zhu Chen, who owns Wellmade Industries, worked with Jiayi Chen and Jianjun Lu to recruit Chinese nationals using false promises. The victims were brought to the U.S. on B-1 and L-1 visas to work at the factory in Cartersville.”

Both owners carry the visa categories and the false-promises framing. That is real corroboration on this specific point, and this page says so plainly because it is one of the few places where it can.

This page does not describe anyone's immigration status as a fact. The visa types are what the sources report about the alleged scheme, and they are attributed every time. Nothing here states that any particular person did or did not hold lawful status. That is a determination for a court and an immigration process, not for a news page working from two television stories.

Attention: a B-1 or an L-1 is a real, lawful visa category, and the presence of one in an allegation is not itself evidence of wrongdoing by anyone who holds one. The allegation here is about how the categories were allegedly used, and it is aimed at three charged men, not at the people who traveled on them.

The working conditions described in the charging document

Again: allegations. Attributed in every sentence, deliberately, including where the repetition reads as heavy.

WSB-TV reports of the period after the workers arrived: “Once the workers arrived, they were forced to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, in unsafe conditions and paid less than promised.” WSB-TV also reports: “The workers were forced to work long hours and were kept in overcrowded and dirty conditions, according to the DOJ.”

FOX 5 Atlanta reports: “Once the victims arrived, the defendants forced them to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week in unsafe conditions, officials said.” It reports separately that “Authorities said the men paid the workers less than promised and threatened physical violence, deportation and crippling debt if they stopped working.” In its own summary at the top of its story, FOX 5 Atlanta writes: “Authorities said the victims were brought on false promises, forced into 12-hour factory shifts and kept in dirty housing.”

Two owners carry the same core: 12-hour shifts, six days a week, unsafe conditions, less pay than promised. Both also describe unclean living conditions, though they word it differently — WSB-TV uses “overcrowded and dirty conditions,” and FOX 5 Atlanta uses “dirty housing.” The difference in wording is in the table below rather than merged into one phrase, because merging is how a detail nobody published gets invented.

None of this is written on this page as narration. There is no scene, no shift described from the inside, no reconstruction of a day at the plant. That version would be vivid and it would be fabricated, because nothing establishing it exists in what was opened for this report.

The alleged threats

WSB-TV reports: “Federal officials say the defendants allegedly threatened foreign workers here on visas with ‘physical violence, deportation, and crippling debt’ if they stopped working at the factory.”

FOX 5 Atlanta reports: “Authorities said the men paid the workers less than promised and threatened physical violence, deportation and crippling debt if they stopped working.”

Both owners carry all three categories of alleged threat, in the same order, and both attribute them to officials rather than stating them directly. This page does the same.

Why the threat allegations matter legally, as general background: the federal forced labor statute does not require chains or locked doors. It reaches labor obtained by force or threats of force, by serious harm or threats of serious harm, by the abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process, or by a scheme intended to make a person believe they would suffer serious harm if they stopped. The statute defines serious harm to include nonphysical harm — psychological, financial or reputational — that is serious enough to compel a reasonable person in the same circumstances to keep working to avoid it. That is a description of what the law says. It is not a statement that anything in this case satisfies it.

The alien harboring count against Zhu Chen alone

Precision matters here, because this count is charged against one of three men. Both newsrooms report that Zhu Chen was also charged with alien harboring. Neither reports that count against Jiayi Chen or Jianjun Lu, and this page does not extend it to them.

FOX 5 Atlanta gives the stated basis: the charge is “for housing workers without legal status in properties owned by the business.” That is a description of what the government alleges, and it appears in the record compiled for this page in FOX 5 Atlanta's account.

As general background on federal law: the federal harboring statute reaches a person who, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that someone has come to, entered or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors or shields that person from detection in any place, including any building. Where the offense is committed for commercial advantage or private financial gain, the statute sets a higher penalty ceiling than where it is not. Again: that is what the law provides, not a finding about this case.

This page does not state that any worker lacked lawful status. The government's allegation is the government's allegation. Immigration status is a legal determination, it changes, and describing a person's status as settled fact on the strength of a charging document would be exactly the error this page is built to avoid.

The 20-year maximum, and what a maximum actually means

Both newsrooms report the same figure. WSB-TV: “If convicted, the defendants face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.” FOX 5 Atlanta: “Zhu Chen, Jiayi Chen and Jianjun Lu face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.”

A statutory maximum is a ceiling, not a forecast. It is the most a court could impose on a count after a conviction. It is not a sentence anyone has received, not an average, and not a likely outcome. Federal sentences are set by a judge after a conviction, guided by the advisory sentencing guidelines and by the statutory sentencing factors, and they routinely land far below the ceiling printed in a press release.

The 20-year figure is conditional on a word both stories include: if convicted. No one has been convicted. Reprinting “20 years” without that condition converts a legislative ceiling into an implied outcome, which is how a maximum penalty ends up in a reader's memory as a sentence.

For general context on how the ceiling is set: the federal forced labor statute provides that a person who violates it shall be fined, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and sets a higher ceiling where death results or where the violation includes certain aggravating conduct. The federal conspiracy provision covering that offense provides that a person who conspires to violate it is punished in the same manner as a completed violation. That is the structure of the law. Nothing in the record compiled for this page states which counts carry which ceiling in this indictment.

The company is not the defendant

Three men are charged. A company is not. Nothing in the record compiled for this page describes an indictment of Wellmade Industries, a corporate charge, a corporate plea or a corporate penalty.

Both newsrooms connect Zhu Chen to the company as its owner, and both place the alleged conduct at a flooring manufacturing plant in Cartersville. That is the extent of what is established about the business here.

Why this page holds the line: a company is an employer, a landlord, a taxpayer and a party to contracts, and it employs people who are not accused of anything. Writing that a company committed a crime when its owner has been charged is a distinct and additional accusation against a distinct legal person, and it sweeps in everyone who works there. The charges named in both stories are against individuals.

No statement from the company, from any defendant or from any defense lawyer appears in the record compiled for this page. This page does not characterize a silence it cannot see. Nothing here should be read as a defendant declining to comment, because nothing here establishes that anyone was asked.

The alleged victims, and why this page will not describe them

The people at the center of this case are alleged victims of a crime. This page does not name them, count them, describe them individually or publish anything that could identify them.

That is a decision, and it is the right one even where a detail might be available elsewhere. People identified as victims in a forced labor prosecution are, by the nature of the allegation, in an exposed position: their immigration status, their employment, their housing and in some cases their safety can all turn on how visible they become. A local news page adds nothing by describing them and can cost them a great deal.

Both newsrooms refer to them collectively. WSB-TV writes about Chinese nationals and foreign workers here on visas. FOX 5 Atlanta writes about Chinese nationals and refers to them as victims. This page follows that, and goes no further.

FOX 5 Atlanta reports that the number has not been released. In its own summary of open questions, the station writes: “Federal officials have not released the exact number of victims involved in the operation or specified when the alleged labor trafficking first began.” No count of alleged victims appears anywhere in the record compiled for this page, and none is printed here. A number that exists only in an aggregator's summary is not one this site will hand a reader.

Where our sources differ

This is the part of the page that exists because two owners covered the same indictment and did not write the same story. Each row says which newsroom established which fact. Nothing here is merged, and nothing is resolved.

Read the two “not carried” columns carefully. They mean only that a detail does not appear in the specific story opened for this page. They are not a claim about what a newsroom knows, chose to omit, or published somewhere else.

Who is prosecuting the case

FOX 5 Atlanta names the trial team: “Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leanne Marek and Jennifer Keen, along with trial attorney Elizabeth Hutson, are prosecuting the case.” FOX 5 Atlanta gives its source for the story as the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia.

WSB-TV quotes the U.S. Attorney. Its story carries this statement: “My office will ensure that predators who traffic at-risk laborers and violate our immigration laws to enrich themselves are investigated, apprehended, and prosecuted,” said U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg.

That quotation is the prosecutor's language about his office's mission, not a finding about these defendants. It is reproduced here verbatim, from the WSB-TV story, and it is not used anywhere on this page as a description of what the three men did. A prosecutor's characterization of a case is advocacy. Printing it as though it were an established account of the conduct is how a charging document turns into a verdict on the way through a newsroom.

The Northern District of Georgia is one of three federal judicial districts in the state. The court maintains courthouses in Atlanta, Gainesville, Newnan and Rome. The record compiled for this page does not state which courthouse or division this case is assigned to, and this page does not guess at one.

The 2025 raid, reported by one newsroom

WSB-TV reports that this indictment follows earlier action at the plant. Its story states: “As Channel 2 Action News reported, the company was raided and arrests were made in connection with the case in July 2025.” Channel 2 Action News is WSB-TV's own newscast, so that is the station pointing to its own prior coverage.

This appears in the record compiled for this page in WSB-TV's account. It is carried here as a single-source detail, attributed, and it is in the comparison table above on that basis.

WSB-TV also lists two earlier headlines under a “previous coverage” heading, one referring to bond being denied for two men accused of trafficking people to work at a north Georgia manufacturing plant, and one referring to the owner of Wellmade Flooring and one other person being accused of trafficking people for labor servitude. This page does not treat those headlines as established facts about the current indictment. A headline on a link list is a pointer to a different story on a different day, and nothing in the record compiled for this page ties the people or the outcomes in those earlier items to the three counts described above.

What the sequence does not establish: that any arrest in 2025 involved these three defendants, that any bond decision described in an earlier headline applies to them, or that the earlier matter and this indictment are the same case. This page states the July 2025 raid as WSB-TV reports it and stops there.

Cartersville and Bartow County

Cartersville is the county seat of Bartow County, in northwest Georgia along the I-75 corridor between metro Atlanta and Chattanooga. It is a manufacturing and distribution town, and the county name is worth pinning to the state: there is also a Bartow County in Florida's neighborhood of place names, and searches for “Bartow” collide across states routinely.

Both newsrooms place the plant in Cartersville. WSB-TV describes a flooring manufacturing company in Cartersville. FOX 5 Atlanta describes a Cartersville flooring manufacturing plant and datelines its story CARTERSVILLE, Ga.

No street address, no map and no coordinates appear on this page. The record compiled for it does not contain a specific location beyond the city, and publishing a pinpoint for a site connected to alleged victims would be a bad idea even if one were available. There is no photograph here either.

This is a federal case, not a Bartow County case. A federal indictment is returned by a federal grand jury and prosecuted by the United States, and county-level agencies and the county district attorney are not the charging authority. Nothing in the record compiled for this page describes a state charge, a county prosecution or a sheriff's office role.

How a federal grand jury works

This section is general federal procedure. It is not a description of what happened in this case.

A federal grand jury is a body of citizens convened to decide whether the government may charge someone with a felony. It sits for months, hears many cases, and works in secret. The prosecutor presents evidence and witnesses; the defense is not there. There is no judge presiding over the presentation.

The standard is probable cause — enough evidence to believe an offense was probably committed by the person named. That is the same threshold that supports an arrest warrant, and it is a fraction of the proof beyond a reasonable doubt required to convict.

If the grand jury votes to charge, it returns a document called a true bill, which is the indictment. It typically states the offenses and the essential allegations in the government's language. It is written by prosecutors.

Secrecy is the rule, not an exception. Grand jury proceedings are closed and the material presented is generally not public. That is why an indictment can be public while the evidence behind it is not, and why the public record at this stage is thin by design rather than by anyone's choice.

The practical consequence for a reader: at the indictment stage there is exactly one side of the story in existence, and it is the government's. Anyone reading a story about a new indictment — this one or any other — is reading the accusation, alone, before the defense has filed a single page.

How a federal case moves from indictment to trial

General federal procedure, again, and not a prediction about this case. The stages below are the ordinary path.

• Initial appearance. A defendant is brought before a magistrate judge, told of the charges and of the right to counsel, and a decision is made about release or detention pending trial. Counsel is appointed for a defendant who cannot afford one
• Arraignment. The defendant is formally advised of the charges and enters a plea. A not guilty plea at arraignment is routine and is not a statement about the evidence
• Discovery. The government turns over material to the defense under the rules and under its constitutional disclosure obligations. This is usually where the volume of the case first becomes visible to anyone outside the government
• Pretrial motions. The defense may move to suppress evidence, to dismiss counts, to sever defendants from one another, or to compel disclosure. Rulings on these motions can reshape or end a case before any jury is picked
• The speedy trial clock. Federal law generally requires that trial begin within 70 days of the indictment being filed and made public or of the defendant's first appearance, whichever is later — but the same statute excludes large categories of delay, including time spent on pretrial motions and continuances granted in the interests of justice. Complex multi-defendant cases commonly run far past 70 calendar days without violating the rule
• Resolution. A case ends in a plea, a dismissal, an acquittal or a conviction. Most federal cases end in a plea, which means the version of events in the indictment is frequently never tested by a jury at all
• Sentencing, only after a conviction. A probation officer prepares a presentence report, the parties contest the guideline calculation, and a judge imposes a sentence within the statutory range

Where this case sits on that path: at the very beginning. The record compiled for this page describes an indictment and nothing after it — no arraignment, no plea, no detention ruling, no trial date. This page does not state what happens next, and it does not revisit itself as the docket moves.

What the federal forced labor statute says

This is background on the law, presented as plain text, and verified against the official text of the United States Code rather than a summary. It is not a report of the counts in this indictment, which the record compiled for this page does not enumerate by section.

18 U.S.C. § 1589 is the federal forced labor provision. It reaches a person who knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of another by force, threats of force, physical restraint or threats of physical restraint; by serious harm or threats of serious harm; by the abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process; or by any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that they or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint if the labor were not performed. A separate subsection reaches a person who knowingly benefits financially from participation in a venture engaged in obtaining labor by those means, knowing or in reckless disregard of that fact.

Two of the statute's definitions do most of the work. Serious harm is defined to include harm that is not physical — psychological, financial or reputational — where it is serious enough, in all the circumstances, to compel a reasonable person of the same background to keep working to avoid it. Abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process is defined as using or threatening to use a law or legal process for a purpose it was not designed for, in order to pressure someone into acting or not acting.

The penalty subsection provides for a fine, imprisonment of not more than 20 years, or both, with a higher ceiling where death results from the violation or where the violation includes certain aggravating conduct.

18 U.S.C. § 1594 carries the general provisions for the chapter. Its conspiracy subsection provides that a person who conspires with another to violate the forced labor provision is punished in the same manner as a completed violation. The same section provides for forfeiture and directs that forfeited assets be transferred to satisfy victim restitution orders arising from violations of the chapter.

8 U.S.C. § 1324 is the bringing-in and harboring provision. The harboring clause reaches a person who, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that someone has come to, entered or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors or shields that person from detection in any place, including any building. Its penalty structure sets a higher ceiling where the offense was done for commercial advantage or private financial gain.

Every section number above was checked against the official United States Code text before publication, not taken from a secondary summary. Neither newsroom cited a section number, and this page does not attribute these citations to either of them.

What exists for people affected by a case like this

This section is general information for workers and families, not a description of anyone in this case, and not legal advice. The Local Alert is not a law firm, not a government agency and not able to intervene in anyone's situation.

The National Human Trafficking Hotline operates 24 hours a day and is confidential: 1-888-373-7888, TTY 711, or text 233733. It handles labor trafficking as well as sex trafficking, takes calls in many languages, and does not require a caller to give a name.

Federal law provides specific rights to people identified as victims in a federal criminal case. Under the federal crime victims' rights statute, a crime victim has the right to reasonable and timely notice of public court proceedings, the right not to be excluded from them, the right to be reasonably heard at proceedings involving release, plea or sentencing, the reasonable right to confer with the government's lawyer, the right to full and timely restitution as provided in law, the right to proceedings free from unreasonable delay, and the right to be treated with fairness and with respect for their dignity and privacy.

Restitution in a trafficking case is mandatory rather than discretionary. The federal statute directs a court to order restitution for an offense under the chapter, and defines the amount to include at least the greater of the value of the victim's services to the defendant or the value of that labor under the minimum wage and overtime guarantees of the Fair Labor Standards Act. That is what the statute provides; it says nothing about whether anyone in this case will ever be in a position to invoke it.

Unpaid wages are a separate track from a criminal case. Federal minimum wage and overtime complaints go to the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, and that process is independent of any prosecution. Workplace safety complaints are a third track again, through the federal occupational safety agency.

What this page will not do is tell anyone what their immigration options are. Those determinations depend on individual facts and on legal advice from someone qualified to give it. A person in this position should speak to an immigration lawyer or an accredited nonprofit representative before acting on anything read online, including this page.

How to get the underlying records

The charging document in a federal case is a court record, and it lives with the court — not with a news outlet and not with this site.

• The docket is the starting point. Federal criminal filings are available through the federal judiciary's public electronic records system, PACER, which requires a free account and charges a small per-page fee. Searching by a defendant's name and the district returns the case number, and the case number is what everything else keys off
• The clerk of court is the custodian. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia maintains courthouses in Atlanta, Gainesville, Newnan and Rome. Copies can be requested from the clerk's office where the case is filed. This page does not state which courthouse holds this case, because the record compiled for it does not say
• Expect sealing and redaction. Portions of a trafficking case file are commonly sealed or redacted to protect the identities of people described as victims. That is ordinary and lawful, not obstruction
• Grand jury material is not available. The evidence presented to a grand jury is secret by rule. A request for it will be refused, and no records statute opens it
• The federal Freedom of Information Act does not reach court records. FOIA applies to executive branch agencies, not to the federal judiciary. A FOIA request for a docket or an indictment is aimed at the wrong body

The Georgia Open Records Act does not apply to a federal prosecution either, but readers arrive at this page looking for it, so here is the accurate version for the Georgia records it does cover. Under O.C.G.A. § 50-18-71, an agency must produce responsive records within a reasonable amount of time not to exceed three business days. Where responsive records exist but are not available in that window, the agency must, within the same period, give the requester a description of such records and a timeline for when they will be available. Under the same section, where an agency withholds all or part of a record, it must notify the requester of the specific legal authority for the exemption by Code section, subsection and paragraph, within a reasonable amount of time not to exceed three business days. Copy charges are capped at ten cents per page for letter or legal size documents, or the actual cost of producing the copy for other documents, and no charge may be made for the first quarter hour of search, retrieval or redaction time.

O.C.G.A. § 50-18-72 is the companion list of records for which public disclosure is not required, and it includes records of a pending criminal investigation or prosecution other than initial arrest and incident reports. That is the provision a Georgia agency would rely on to withhold an open file.

The Local Alert has not obtained the indictment in this case. Everything on this page comes from the two named newsrooms listed at the bottom, both of which were opened and read before publication.

What we don't know yet

Nothing above is filled in by inference. Where a fact is missing, this page says it is missing and scopes that statement to the record compiled for it. This page does not revisit itself as the case develops.

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Frequently asked questions

Who was indicted in the Cartersville forced labor case?
Three men: Zhu Chen, 60, Jiayi Chen, 31, and Jianjun Lu, 55. Both WSB-TV and FOX 5 Atlanta carry all three names and all three ages. Both newsrooms describe Zhu Chen as the owner of Wellmade Industries. WSB-TV additionally identifies Jiayi Chen as Zhu Chen's nephew; that family relationship appears in the record compiled for this page in WSB-TV's account, and this page attributes it to WSB-TV rather than presenting it as jointly established.

What are the charges?
Forced labor and conspiracy to commit forced labor, against all three men. Zhu Chen is additionally charged with alien harboring. Both WSB-TV and FOX 5 Atlanta carry the two forced labor counts and the additional harboring count against Zhu Chen alone. Neither of the other two men is charged with alien harboring in anything cited on this page.

Has anyone been convicted?
No. This is an indictment, which is an accusation voted by a grand jury on a finding of probable cause. FOX 5 Atlanta states it directly: the indictment contains allegations, and the government must prove the defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. No plea, no verdict and no trial date appears in the record compiled for this page. All three men are presumed innocent.

What is the difference between an indictment and a conviction?
An indictment is the government's accusation. A grand jury hears the prosecution's evidence in secret, without the defense present and without a judge presiding, and decides only whether there is probable cause to believe an offense was committed. A conviction comes from a trial jury or a guilty plea and requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The gap between the two standards is enormous, and cases are dismissed, acquitted or resolved on different charges all the time.

What does the indictment allege the workers went through?
Every part of this is an allegation. WSB-TV reports, attributing it to the Justice Department, that the defendants lured Chinese nationals to work at Wellmade Industries through false pretenses on B-1 and L-1 visas, that once the workers arrived they were forced to work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, in unsafe conditions and paid less than promised, and that workers were kept in overcrowded and dirty conditions. FOX 5 Atlanta reports that investigators said the three recruited Chinese nationals using false promises, that the victims were brought to the U.S. on B-1 and L-1 visas, that the defendants forced them into 12-hour shifts six days a week in unsafe conditions, and that officials said the men paid the workers less than promised. Nothing in that has been proven.

What threats are alleged?
WSB-TV reports that federal officials say the defendants allegedly threatened foreign workers here on visas with physical violence, deportation, and crippling debt if they stopped working at the factory. FOX 5 Atlanta reports that authorities said the men threatened physical violence, deportation and crippling debt if they stopped working. Both newsrooms carry all three categories and both attribute them to officials. So does this page.

How many workers are involved?
That is not established. FOX 5 Atlanta reports that federal officials have not released the exact number of victims involved in the operation, or specified when the alleged labor trafficking first began. No count appears anywhere in the record compiled for this page, and The Local Alert does not print one. This page also does not name, describe or identify any of the people described as victims.

What is alien harboring, and why is only one man charged with it?
Both newsrooms report the count against Zhu Chen alone, and this page does not extend it to the other two defendants. FOX 5 Atlanta reports the stated basis: housing workers without legal status in properties owned by the business. As general background, the federal harboring provision, 8 U.S.C. section 1324, reaches a person who, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that someone has come to, entered or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors or shields that person from detection in any place, including any building. That is a description of the law, not a finding about this case, and this page does not state that any worker lacked lawful status.

Is the company charged with a crime?
No. Three individuals are charged. Nothing in the record compiled for this page describes an indictment of Wellmade Industries, a corporate charge, a corporate plea or a corporate penalty. Both newsrooms connect Zhu Chen to the company as its owner and place the alleged conduct at a flooring manufacturing plant in Cartersville, and that is the extent of what is established about the business here.

What does the 20-year maximum actually mean?
It is a statutory ceiling, not a forecast and not a sentence. WSB-TV reports that if convicted the defendants face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and FOX 5 Atlanta reports that the three face up to 20 years if convicted. Both include the condition. Federal sentences are imposed by a judge after a conviction, guided by the advisory guidelines and the statutory sentencing factors, and they commonly land well below the maximum. Nobody in this case has been convicted or sentenced.

Who is prosecuting the case?
FOX 5 Atlanta reports that Assistant U.S. Attorneys Leanne Marek and Jennifer Keen, along with trial attorney Elizabeth Hutson, are prosecuting the case, and gives its source as the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia. WSB-TV quotes U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg. That quotation is a prosecutor's statement about his office's mission and is not used anywhere on this page as a description of what the three men did.

Where is Cartersville, and which court is this in?
Cartersville is the county seat of Bartow County, in northwest Georgia along the I-75 corridor between metro Atlanta and Chattanooga. Both newsrooms place the flooring plant in Cartersville. This is a federal case rather than a county case. FOX 5 Atlanta gives its source as the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, and that district maintains courthouses in Atlanta, Gainesville, Newnan and Rome. The record compiled for this page does not state which courthouse or division holds this case, and this page does not guess.

Was there an earlier raid at the plant?
WSB-TV reports that the company was raided and arrests were made in connection with the case in July 2025, citing its own prior Channel 2 Action News coverage. That appears in the record compiled for this page in WSB-TV's account. Nothing in the record compiled for this page establishes that the 2025 arrests involved these three defendants, and this page does not assert a connection.

What happens next in a federal case like this?
As general procedure: an initial appearance before a magistrate judge with a decision on release or detention, an arraignment where a plea is entered, discovery, pretrial motions, and then a plea, a dismissal or a trial. Federal law generally requires trial to begin within 70 days of the indictment being filed and made public or of the defendant's first appearance, whichever is later, but the same statute excludes large categories of delay, so complex multi-defendant cases routinely run much longer without violating the rule. The record compiled for this page describes an indictment and nothing after it.

How do I get a copy of the indictment?
Federal criminal filings are court records, available through the federal judiciary's public electronic records system, PACER, which requires a free account and charges a small per-page fee. Copies can also be requested from the clerk's office at the courthouse where the case is filed. Expect sealing and redaction in a trafficking case to protect the identities of people described as victims, which is ordinary and lawful. Grand jury material is secret by rule and will not be released. The federal Freedom of Information Act applies to executive branch agencies, not to the courts, so a FOIA request for a docket or an indictment is aimed at the wrong body. The Local Alert has not obtained the indictment in this case.

Where can a worker who is being exploited get help?
The National Human Trafficking Hotline operates 24 hours a day and is confidential: 1-888-373-7888, TTY 711, or text 233733. It handles labor trafficking as well as sex trafficking, takes calls in many languages, and does not require a caller to give a name. Unpaid wage complaints are a separate track through the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division, and workplace safety complaints are a third track through the federal occupational safety agency. Immigration questions depend on individual facts and need advice from an immigration lawyer or an accredited nonprofit representative. The Local Alert is not a law firm and cannot intervene in anyone's situation.