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An Upstate New York woman convicted in 2013 of harboring an illegal immigrant in her Saratoga County mansion for more than five years has lost an appeal to overturn her conviction. Annie George, widow of a former Indian-American actor and businessman, will be forced to give up the 30,000 square foot mansion where she kept the domestic servant for 66 months A federal appeals court ruled last week that the government could take possession of the 34-room mansion known as “Llenroc” overlooking the Mohawk River.
The victim, Valsamma Mathai, was forced to do housework and child care seven days a week from dawn until night. Prosecutors said she worked 17-hour days and was forced to live in a closet, Syracuse.com reported. Mathai should have been paid a salary of $317,144, but George only paid her $21,000, the Albany Times-Union reported. Much of that money was sent back to her family in India.
When authorities came to Llenroc, George, also known as Annie Kolath and Sajimol George, initially refused to talk to them. She put the victim in the basement and later pushed her out a side door, prosecutors said. Later, George reportedly maintained at trial that she didn’t know Mathai was in the country illegally.
Mathai originally came to the United States on a visa to work at the United Nations, but later came Upstate to care for the George family’s properties. That violated the terms of her visa. Mathai worked for the family until 2011, when a son in India contacted a human trafficking hotline, concerned that his mother was being exploited, the Courthouse News Service reported. Federal authorities later removed her from the home.
George was indicted in 2012 on one count of harboring an illegal alien for private financial gain, but was convicted after a five-day trial of harboring without the private-gain enhancement. She was sentenced to eight months of home detention, five years’ probation and was ordered to turn over the mansion.
Llenroc, on a 12-acre site that includes space to land a helicopter, was built over eight years by an Albany insurance executive who named it in honor of his university alma mater, Cornell (spelled backwards). It was built in the likeness of Cornell’s student center, using Ithaca bluestone quarried near the college. The home has 15 fireplaces, 10 bathrooms, a 12-car underground garage and an indoor swimming pool shaped like a sailboat.The George family bought the mansion in 2009 for $1.88 million.
