A company at the center of an alleged multimillion dollar scheme involving money laundering and undocumented workers was hired as part of the construction of the stadium portion of the Rock Chalk Park sports complex, an attorney for Lawrence businessman Thomas Fritzel has confirmed.

Jose R. Torres Drywall was used as a subcontractor by Fritzel’s Bliss Sports LC, Edward Frizell, an attorney for Fritzel and Bliss Sports, said in a written statement.

Last month, the drywall company and its owner, Jose Torres-Garcia, were named as central figures in a federal indictment that alleges Torres served as a financial intermediary to process about $13 million worth of payments made to undocumented workers on drywall crews in the greater Kansas City area.

“During the time Jose R. Torres Drywall was providing subcontractor services on Rock Chalk Park, Bliss Sports was unaware of any of the irregularities mentioned in the recent indictment of Jose R. Torres Drywall,” Frizell said in his statement.

Torres-Garcia has pleaded guilty to a series of charges related to the alleged scheme and has begun cooperating with federal prosecutors as part of a plea agreement. In the agreement, Torres-Garcia stated that Jose R. Torres Drywall never operated as a legitimate drywall company, but rather “operated as a money remitter.”

Last month, U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom filed charges against Lawrence-based Plaster Masters and six individuals who are alleged to have worked with Torres-Garcia as part of the scheme. During a press conference announcing the charges, Grissom said he expected more charges to be forthcoming in the case.

The U.S. Attorney’s office has taken a position that most companies that worked with Torres-Garcia’s firm either “knew or recklessly disregarded that the drywall construction crews were made up primarily of undocumented aliens …”. Grissom has argued that contractors have benefited from the use of undocumented workers by paying less than market-rate wages and avoiding taxes and insurance requirements.

A spokesman for Grissom’s office said there is evidence that about 30 area contractors worked with Torres’ company between October 2012 and June 2014.

During that period, Fritzel and his related companies were busy building the Rock Chalk Park project, which includes about $39 million in stadiums that are being leased by Kansas University’s Athletics Corp., a $10.5 million city-owned recreation center, and about $13 million worth of shared infrastructure that serves the city and KU facilities.

Frizell indicated Torres served as one of several drywall contractors that worked on the stadium portions of the project. Although a Fritzel-related firm — Gene Fritzel Construction — won the low bid to construct the city’s recreation center, Frizell said that the Torres firm did not work on the city-owned recreation center. He said longtime Lawrence contractor Kenneth Sloan Drywall served as the drywall subcontractor for the recreation center. City Manager David Corliss said that is his understanding as well.

City officials said they don’t have reason to believe that undocumented workers were used on the city-funded portions of the job site, on drywall or other parts of the project. The city provided funding for the recreation center and the shared infrastructure, but did not provide funding for the stadium projects.

Wanting to hear more

City officials said they intend to monitor the federal case for any developments that would affect the city.

“If allegations become facts and we need to respond accordingly, we’ll do that,” Corliss said.

City commissioners said that if a finding is made that undocumented workers were used at Rock Chalk Park, it would be a disappointment.

“If this is true, it clearly is not a situation that we as taxpayers want to be involved with,” said City Commissioner Mike Dever, who has been a supporter of the public-private partnership between the city, Fritzel and Kansas University Endowment, which owns much of the land that houses the complex.

A spokeswoman with Kansas University Endowment issued a brief statement from the association and from Kansas Athletics: “When the indictment of Jose R. Torres Drywall came to light, Bliss Sports made Kansas Athletics aware that the company had performed work at Rock Chalk Park. Bliss informed us that it was unaware of any of the irregularities mentioned in the indictment, and we have had subsequent discussions with Bliss Sports about this issue.”

City Commissioner Jeremy Farmer — who, if tradition holds, is set to become the city’s next mayor following Tuesday’s elections — said he wanted to hear more about the circumstances surrounding the hiring of Torres-Garcia’s firm, but he said it was concerning.

“It appears to be a pretty egregious error,” Farmer said. “If he has acknowledged hiring the firm, that is not a good deal.”

Frizell, Fritzel’s attorney, did not respond to a request seeking further information on how Bliss Sports II came to hire Torres-Garcia’s firm or how Bliss did not know about the firm’s role in the alleged undocumented worker scheme. Frizell confirmed that Jose R. Torres Drywall had been used as a subcontractor at Rock Chalk Park after the Journal-World obtained a 1099 federal tax form that showed Bliss Sports LC had paid the Torres firm a little more than $71,000 in 2013. It is unclear whether Bliss used the firm in other years as well.

In the indictment against Plaster Masters and the other defendants, prosecutors spell out how they believe the scheme worked. Among the details:

• Torres-Garcia’s firm was not responsible for providing drywall crews to the actual job sites. Instead, “subcontractors would contract directly with the drywall crews but would use Torres as the financial intermediary.”

• Drywall crews would direct contractors to make their checks payable to Jose R. Torres Drywall. The contractors would give the checks directly to crew members, who then took the checks to a mobile phone store that Torres-Garcia worked at in Olathe. Torres-Garcia then would deposit those checks into one of his accounts, and on the following day withdraw cash that was given to the drywall crew members. Torres-Garcia would keep 5 percent of the total for his services. Prosecutors found that between October 2012 and June 2014, Torres-Garcia deposited about $13.2 million worth of checks into his accounts.

The charges against Plaster Masters and the six individuals connected with the firm represent a change in direction on prosecution of illegal immigration cases. Grissom, at last month’s press conference, said he intends to hold the contractors who have hired the undocumented workers responsible.

“We thought there has to be a better, more humane, and from the taxpayers’ standpoint, a more effective way to address this problem,” Grissom said. “We have targeted what we believe is one of the major focuses that is driving our illegal immigration problem, which is employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers.”

In the Plaster Masters case, the defendants are facing 31 charges. The most serious are money laundering, which has a maximum penalty of 20 years and a fine of up to $500,000, and bank fraud, which has a maximum penalty of 30 years and a fine up to $1 million.

Editor’s note: This story has been changed from the original version published early April 5. In an earlier version, Bliss Sports LC was incorrectly identified as Bliss Sports II.

Developer Thomas Fritzel’s Bliss Sports LC financed and owns the various stadiums and Kansas University-related facilities at Rock Chalk Park. It was not the entity that built the city-owned recreation center.

Bliss Sports II is the Fritzel firm hired to serve as the general contractor for the publicly funded infrastructure construction at Rock Chalk Park.