A pizza shop owner is sentenced to 8.5 years in prison for threatening workers with deportation

BOSTON — The owner of two Boston-area pizza shops convicted of forced labor for using physical violence and threats of reprisal or deportation against employees living in the country illegally has been sentenced to more than eight years in prison.

Stavros Papantoniadis, 49, of Westwood — the owner of Stash’s Pizza, a Massachusetts pizzeria chain — was sentenced Friday in federal court to 102 months in prison, one year of supervised release and ordered to pay a $35,000 fine.

Papantoniadis forced or attempted to force six victims — five men and one woman — to work for him and comply with excessive workplace demands through violent physical abuse; threats of violence and solemn damage; and repeated threats to update the victims to immigration authorities for deportation, according to prosecutors.

In June, a jury convicted Papantoniadis of three counts of forced labor and three counts of attempted forced labor. Papantoniadis has remained in safekeeping since his arrest in March 2023.

A lawyer for Papantoniadis said he’s pursuing a recent trial and an appeal.

“Although the judge saw fit to sentence him slightly beneath the guidelines, we are disappointed in the length of the sentence,” Carmine Lepore said in an email. “The sentencing guidelines applicable to this case are more appropriate for human traffickers and sexual servitude defendants.”

Acting United States Attorney Joshua Levy said Papantoniadis was driven by greed to prey on his workers.

“Labor trafficking exploits the vulnerable through terror and intimidation, all in pursuit of the almighty buck. That is what Stavros Papantoniadis did when he violated the rights of the people working in his restaurants,” Levy said.

“He deliberately hired foreign nationals who lacked authorization to work in the United States and then turned their lack of immigration position against them, threatening them with deportation and violence to keep them under his control,” he added.

Papantoniadis thinly staffed his pizza shops, and deliberately hired workers without immigration position to work behind the scenes, for 14 or more hours per day and as many as seven days per week, investigators said.

To control the undocumented workers, he made them depend that he would physically damage them or have them deported and monitored them with surveillance cameras. When Papantoniadis learned that one victim planned to quit, he choked him, causing that victim to flee the pizza shop.

When another worker tried to leave and drive away from one of Papantoniadis’ pizza shops, Papantoniadis chased the victim down Route 1 in Norwood, Massachusetts, and falsely reported the victim to the local police to pressure the victim to gain to work at the pizza shop, prosecutors said.