The federal government dismissed its human trafficking case Friday against the owner and employees of a labor-contracting company accused of victimizing 600 workers it imported from Thailand to work on farms in Hawaii and other U.S. states.

In their request to the court to drop the case, federal prosecutors said based on the state of the available, admissible evidence, they have determined that they are not likely to prevail in proving their case and that continuing with the prosecution no longer serves the public interest.

Charges were dropped against California-based Global Horizons Inc. owner Mordechai Yosef Orian; company employees Pranee Tubchumpol, Ratawan Chunharutai and Joseph Knoller; and Thai labor recruiter Podjanee Sinchai.

Trial was scheduled for next month.

Three other former Global Horizons employees — Shane Germann, Bruce Schwartz and Sam Wongsesanit — who had pleaded guilty and were expected to testify in the trial, will be allowed to withdraw their guilty pleas and have the charges against them dropped.

It was the second high-profile human trafficking case federal prosecutors have dismissed in Hawaii in the past year.

In August the government dropped its case against brothers Alec and Mike Sou of Aloun Farms after their trial had started.

The request to dismiss the Global Horizons case, signed by Department of Justice Civil Rights Division attorney Daniel H. Weiss, said that in October 2011, in light of the Aloun Farms dismissal, government lawyers reviewed the evidence and conducted an additional investigation of the case. Based on that investigation, they decided to dismiss the case.

As in the Aloun Farms case, the government will not be able to refile charges against the Global Horizons defendants.

In a written statement, DOJ spokes­woman Nanda Chitre said the department will continue to aggressively pursue significant human trafficking cases, ranging from single-victim domestic servitude to prosecutions that dismantle transnational organized criminal networks.

Orian’s Hawaii lawyer, Michael Green, said Orian, 46, walks away from the case with a moral victory and little else.

"As far as his reputation, his ability to support his family, putting him through hell for years, the moral victory doesn’t compensate for the emotional impact and financial loss," Green said, "There’s a moral victory but he’s lost everything."

Tubchumpol’s lawyer, William Harrison, said, "We had been telling the government that the workers made up stories about their living and working conditions because immigration lawyers had told them that if they were victims of human trafficking, they could remain in the country and get citizenship. It was a ploy by the alleged victims for visas."

The indictment against Orian, an Israeli national, and the other defendants said they exploited about 600 Thai farmworkers from 2001 to August 2007, holding them in servitude by confiscating their passports, paying them less than promised and threatening to send them back to Thailand when the workers complained about their wages and working conditions.

The workers feared going back to Thailand because they had taken out loans, backed by their land and homes as collateral, to pay upfront recruitment fees of $9,500 to $26,500, the indictment said.

The defendants placed the workers on farms in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Mississippi, New York, Utah and Washington, sometimes shuttling the workers between states, according to the indictment.