Owners of California mushroom farms where farmworkers killed seven people must pay more than $450,000 in back wages and damages to 62 workers

The owners of California Terra Gardens and Concord Farms in Half Moon Bay will also pay $70,000 in civil penalties for illegally deducting money from workers’ wages to keep them in cramped shipping containers, garages, dilapidated trailers and a moldy, of Insect-infested and surrounded greenhouse to accommodate garbage, the department said in a statement.

Chunli Zhao, who worked at California Terra Gardens and had worked at Concord Farms, was charged with seven counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in the Jan. 23, 2023, shootings that stunned the small coastal community about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of San Francisco . He has pleaded not guilty.

Authorities said Zhao opened fire at the California Terra Garden, killing four colleagues and wounding another. They said he then drove about 2 miles to Concord Farms, a mushroom farm from which he was fired in 2015, and shot three workers.

The owners of California Terra Gardens, Inc., Xianmin Guan and his wife Liming Zhu, illegally deducted money from workers’ wages for substandard housing, federal officials said. Federal investigators discovered 39 workers housed in cramped shipping containers, garages and dilapidated trailers with dirty mattresses, the agency said.

At Concord Farms, owner Grace Tung housed workers in moldy, makeshift quarters in an insect-infested greenhouse, federal officials said.

Emails from The Associated Press seeking comment from the farms’ owners were not immediately returned Monday.

“Our investigators found workers at California Terra Gardens and Concord Farms housed in squalid conditions, forced to sleep near garbage and had insects everywhere,” said Alberto Raymond, assistant district director of the Wage and Hour Division in San Francisco.