Some horrors are discovered by chance.

Jose Tecum was accused of enslaving a young Guatemalan national, Maria Choz, and forging papers so she could pick Florida vegetables in 1999.

Authorities discovered the case when the Collier County Sheriff's Department responded to a domestic call at Tecum's Immokalee house and happened upon slavery.

Choz ``cried and visibly shook,'' according to court papers. ``Ms. Choz told the advocate that she felt like a slave and that she had to perform any services that Tecum required.''

In his native Guatemala, Tecum had owned the largest house in their mountain community, while Choz lived in squalor. Prosecutors say Tecum threatened to kill Choz or her father unless the family gave the young woman to him. He then smuggled her to the United States.

``This case is about people with power and the powerless,'' prosecutor Susan French said at trial in federal court in Fort Myers. ``This is a case about modern-day slavery in the United States.''

In Florida, court papers say Tecum demanded sex from Choz when his wife was away and arranged for her to work at David C. Brown Farms, providing her with a fake ID. ``Every paycheck she earned, he took it. And she received maybe one or two or three dollars,'' a prosecutor said in court.

The Herald made five requests to interview David C. Brown, who owns an 8,000-square-foot Fort Myers mansion assessed at $860,260 and operates the farm company. He did not respond, nor did he reply to written questions.

Choz's pain was clear when prosecutors asked her to identify Tecum for jurors: ``I don't want to look at his face,'' trial transcripts show that she said.

In 2000, Tecum was found guilty of six charges, including involuntary servitude, kidnapping and smuggling. He went to prison for nine years.

``The biggest issue I think prosecutors can eventually make - and we haven't made it yet - is to make trafficking in humans unprofitable,'' said Douglas Molloy, managing assistant U.S. attorney in Fort Myers. ``Actually, make the growers and people making money off the labor, make sure they do not have indentured servitude.''

He believes that investigators should convict the low-level and midlevel offenders first, then get them to testify about others higher up.

``Follow the money,'' said Molloy, who helped put Tecum and Cuello away.

In another case, North Florida contractor Miguel Flores was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 1997 for keeping workers in involuntary servitude and for other crimes.

Authorities say Flores recruited poor, uneducated immigrants from Arizona border towns, billing them for their treacherous trek here. He then supplied thousands of those laborers to farmers from South Florida to rural South Carolina.

The indictment focused on a secluded South Carolina camp he controlled. It was surrounded by woods and marshes, and the only exit was an unlit, unpaved road. Henchmen beat workers and fired weapons to scare others.

Workers awaited a brutal fate if they fled, court papers say: ``They would be hunted down.''

The fifth case, brought against Fort Pierce harvester Michael Allen Lee, shows how bosses can financially exploit farmworkers, billing for everything from drugs to food to rent. Lee got a four-year sentence.

He had been subcontracted by farmers in Central Florida and South Florida to assemble crews to harvest fruit, the lifeblood of the state's farm industry.

The feds say that Lee, himself a descendant of slaves, recruited homeless or drug-addicted men.

``Lee provided workers with crack cocaine, resulting in a debt that was assessed against their wages,'' prosecutors said in court papers. ``In addition to the crack cocaine, the workers' debt was enhanced through short-term loans for rent, food, cigarettes and beer.''