COLUMBIA - South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson has announced that the South Carolina State Grand Jury has issued six indictments in an investigation known as “Ghost Story”.
To date, six defendants have been indicted on illegal immigration and identity theft charges, following an investigation that began in the fall of 2024 with cooperation from state, federal, and local law enforcement agencies in South Carolina. A multi-jurisdictional law enforcement operation was conducted on Wednesday, June 3, 2026, at South Carolina business Burnstein Von Seelen Precision Casting in Abbeville, South Carolina. Two managers were arrested on their State Grand Jury charges, and 48 workers at the business were detained by ICE for immigration violations.
“If you are unlawfully aiding illegal immigrants in South Carolina, you are going to be investigated and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Attorney General Alan Wilson said. “If you are taking advantage of hard-working Americans, stealing their identities, and are intentionally ignoring your responsibilities as an employer in an effort to circumvent the law, we are coming for you," he added. “These crimes are not only stealing jobs from American employees but also pose a serious risk to national security. When criminals make it easy for illegal aliens to get fake identification documents, we don’t know who is working in our country, and in this operation, specifically, our national security and manufacturing sectors.”
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STATEMENT:
Paul Bowers
(he / him / his)
Director of Communications
ACLU of South Carolina
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The State Grand Jury’s indictments reflect an investigation into the extensive problem of how easily illegal immigrants in South Carolina can get fake US and State identification from “document vendors” throughout the State. It also reflects allegations that a business in South Carolina knowingly facilitated the use of fraudulent identification by illegal immigrants they employed. The indictments allege that two managers of Burnstein Von Seelen Precision Casting, Christopher Douglas Ramey and Sandy Lynn Willis, violated their legal obligations to verify the legitimacy of IDs before hiring employees, and facilitated the use of forged identity documents by illegal immigrants at the business. The remaining defendants were allegedly document vendors who obtained forged state driver’s licenses, USA social security cards, or other fake identification for illegal immigrants to use. These fake identity cards included the use of the dates of birth and Social Security numbers of actual United States citizens.
This investigation is ongoing, and certain aspects of the investigation remain sealed.
South Carolina Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark A. Keel said: “This raid is the direct result of an exhaustive, years-long investigation. It should serve as a deterrent to anyone who participates in illegal employment. Employers who knowingly and willfully hire illegal labor must be held accountable. Employees who provide fraudulent documents in order to gain employment will be brought to justice. I want to be clear: illegal employment schemes will not be tolerated in South Carolina. This case would not be possible without our local, state, and federal law enforcement partners.”
“The crimes uncovered in Operation Ghost Story are not victimless. When illegal aliens use stolen identities and forged documents, they victimize law-abiding citizens whose personal information is misused and undermine the security of our communities. These actions also enable businesses to profit from illegal labor at the expense of honest workers and employers,” said Mark M. Zito, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations in North and South Carolina. “HSI is committed to working with our partners to aggressively investigate and dismantle these criminal operations, protect victims, and hold offenders fully accountable.”
Eighth Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo said, “This is a great example of seamless coordination between multiple law enforcement agencies, working shoulder-to-shoulder with prosecutors, to finally hold accountable those who are facilitating and insulating criminal migration into our country. My office will continue to fight the scourge of illegal immigration and, most importantly, call out enablers of those entering and remaining in our country illegally. I welcome migration into our country, but it must be done the right way.”
“I want to commend the hard work of the State Grand Jury staff and their law enforcement partners at SLED, HSI, ICE, the Abbeville, Greenville, Newberry, and Greenwood County Sheriff’s Offices, and the Eighth Circuit Solicitor’s Office,” Attorney General Wilson added. “Yet again, the South Carolina State Grand Jury division of the Attorney General’s Office brings together partners across jurisdictions so we punch harder together than we ever could apart.”
Bond hearings for defendants Ramey and Willis were Thursday, June 4, at 10 a.m. before the Honorable Heath P. Taylor at the Richland County Courthouse.
The following indictments were made public in the Ghost Story investigation:
The case was investigated by the South Carolina State Grand Jury, which was assisted in this case by a partnership of the Attorney General’s State Grand Jury Division, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Abbeville County Sheriff’s Office, the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office, the Newberry County Sheriff’s Office, the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office, and the Eighth Circuit Solicitor’s Office. The cases will be prosecuted by State Grand Jury Division Chief Attorney Creighton Waters and Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Fernandez.
Attorney General Wilson stressed that all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a court of law.
MORE:
More than 50 arrested in Upstate immigration sting
Six people were indicted on criminal charges, while 48 workers at the Abbeville plant were detained by federal immigration agents
BY: SKYLAR LAIRD - JUNE 4, 2026 6:00 PM
COLUMBIA — A raid focused on people who forge paperwork and hire workers living in the country illegally led to dozens of arrests at an Abbeville metal castings maker, law enforcement officials announced Thursday.
Two managers were among the 50 arrested Wednesday, showing how South Carolina officials hope to keep people from entering the country without legal permission. Three others accused of forging documents were arrested months ago, said state Attorney General Alan Wilson.
Instead of targeting the workers themselves, officials want to stop the people believed to be selling them false papers for hiring purposes, he said.
“It’s so easy for people to get those, so that’s the problem that we needed to fight,” said Creighton Waters, chief attorney overseeing the State Grand Jury.
But once law enforcement officers arrived at the plant about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, he said, they couldn’t ignore that some workers had entered the country without legal permission.
The State Grand Jury, which consists of 18 people who hear complex criminal cases, indicted two managers of the metal castings company Burnstein von Seelen on charges of identity fraud to obtain employment, criminal conspiracy and forgery.
A message left by the SC Daily Gazette on the company’s voicemail Thursday seeking comment was not returned.
Another four people were charged with forgery and identity fraud under allegations they created and sold false documents to workers who needed them. All but one have been arrested. Authorities are still looking for that person.
The investigation is ongoing, so more charges are possible, Wilson said.
People shouldn’t be afraid to go to work or out in public following the raid, Wilson said.
State law enforcement officials don’t intend to go after companies unless they have proof someone is fabricating documents or intentionally hiring people without proof of legal residence, he said.
“I want to make it clear we are not targeting communities because of what you look like or where you work,” Wilson said. “We’re targeting specific conduct, we’re following the facts of that conduct, and if it leads us to a crime, we’re going to prosecute that crime.”
But Jace Woodrum, director for the state’s chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the raid will stoke fear among people who are trying to do what’s best for their families. He cautioned that the investigation is still in its early phases, meaning people don’t yet know the full story of what happened.
“The bottom line is that these employees showed up for work, and many of them will not be able to return home to their families,” Woodrum said in a statement. “In other states, we’ve seen similar actions include gross violations of individual liberties that are guaranteed to all regardless of immigration status.”
Wilson said Operation Ghost Story, as the investigation is called, started in October 2024, when local law enforcement officers complained to the state attorney general’s office that the Abbeville machine shop employed many workers without permanent legal status.
Police in the area didn’t feel they had the resources to investigate the case, so they reached out to the attorney general’s office and State Law Enforcement Division for help, said Wilson, one of five Republicans running for governor.
Undercover work and witnesses led law enforcement officers to believe the plant’s managers hired workers several times under different names, suggesting they knew the documents were fake, he said.
The attorney general’s office decided to pursue the case the way it would a drug bust, Waters said.
Rather than going after the people using the forged documents, investigators wanted to know where the documents were coming from and stop the people creating and selling them, in turn preventing more people from using them, Waters said.
The false documents often listed real Social Security and driver’s license numbers, which constitutes identity fraud, he said.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers accompanied state and local officers to check workers’ residency statuses and detain anyone without the proper documentation.
ICE is processing the 48 workers arrested with the intention of deporting anyone who lacks the proper paperwork to live in the country. Most of the workers came from Guatemala or Mexico, said Maria Somers, assistant field office director for ICE.
The Trump administration’s focus on immigration helped accelerate the process, Wilson said, though he said the investigation is “not a political issue at all.”
Once Trump took office, the state had more federal support to move forward, but the state would have pursued the operation either way, he said.
He couldn’t say whether the arrests were a direct result of a revival in agreements for local law enforcement officers to help federal agents detain immigrants.
The city and county of Abbeville are not among the 42 police and sheriff’s departments that have signed onto the program, called 287(g) agreements.
SLED does have an agreement allowing agents to enforce immigration laws.
A bill that would have required all law enforcement agencies that operate a jail to sign up for at least one version of the program passed the House 84-26 but never got a hearing in the Senate.
This was the second major raid the attorney general’s office has publicly participated in over the past year. In June 2025, state law enforcement officers helped arrest 80 people at an unlicensed Charleston County nightclub.
People at the club that night and advocates decried the raid for detaining people on civil immigration charges, not for criminal actions, and scaring the community away from large gatherings.
That was not the intent of this week’s operation, Waters and Wilson said.
“This investigation is not about targeting hard-working people that are just trying to put food on the table, but we cannot ignore identity theft,” Waters said. “We cannot ignore blatant violations of the law.”
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
