Long Island couple found guilty of enslaving two Indonesian women they hired as housekeepers

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A jury on Monday convicted a millionaire couple of enslaving two Indonesian women they brought to their Long Island mansion to work as housekeepers, subjecting them to repeated psychological and physical abuse and forcing them to work 18 hours or more a day.

Eyewitness News is told family members of the couple, Mahender Murlidhar Sabhnani, 51, and his wife, Varsha Mahender Sabhnani, 45 erupted in emotion during the reading of the verdict, halting the guilty verdicts halfway through the readings.

Officials say one of the couple's daughters fainted in the front row as the verdict was read, causing the judge to clear the courtroom while medical personnel attended to her.

The jury in U.S. District Court in Central Islip had been deliberating the charges against Varsha Sabhnani and her husband, Mahender.

They were each convicted of all charges in a 12-count federal indictment that included forced labor, conspiracy, involuntary servitude, and harboring aliens.

The Sabhnanis, who have a total of four children, 3 of who operate a worldwide perfume business out of their Muttontown home on Long Island's Gold Coast, could see up to 40 years in prison, although attorneys predicted the punishment would be considerably less.

They spent nearly three months in jail following their arrest before a judge signed off on a bail package that required the couple to post $4.5 million and pay an estimated $10,000 a day for round-the-clock security monitoring while they were kept under house arrest. Prosecutors had argued the Sabhnanis - he is from India, and she is from Indonesia, but both are naturalized U.S. citizens - were a flight risk.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=...&id=5839849