Memeger said the brothers had found the mostly male migrants in Ukraine, and lured them with the promise of a legitimate job, food, and housing.
Instead, he said, the migrants worked 16-hour days cleaning retail and grocery stores, including Target, Kmart, Wal-Mart, and Safeway, for $100 a month. They slept five and six to a room, and their travel documents were taken away as they were shuttled between jobs in New Jersey, New York, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
The crimes are alleged to have occurred between 2000 and 2007. Eight of the migrants are cooperating with the government. Prosecutors say about 30 were brought to Philadelphia.
Memeger identified the alleged rapist as Moylan "Milo" Botsvynyuk, 51, who was arrested Wednesday in Berlin on an Interpol warrant and is to be returned to the United States.
He was the oldest of the brothers and the alleged leader. All five entered the country legally as tourists, but remained after their visas expired.
Botsvynyuk ran work crews out of a residence on the 3200 block of Aramingo Avenue in Port Richmond, court records say. The home, a former shop, is in a neighborhood of well-kept rowhouses. Other brothers lived nearby.
One, Stepan Botsvynyuk, 35, was arrested outside Riverview Plaza in South Philadelphia and was ordered held without bail pending a hearing next week.
The three other brothers left the country before 2007. Mykhaylo Botsvynyuk and Yaroslav "Slavko" Churuk, 41, were arrested in Toronto by Canadian police. Dmytro Botsvynyuk is in Ukraine, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
All the brothers were unaware of the investigation until law enforcement officials in the three nations swept in and arrested them, said Douglas E. Lindquist, FBI assistant special agent in charge.
