HALF MOON BAY – The proprietor of a Half Moon Bay hemp farm has been sentenced to almost a 12 months in custody for failing to pay his employees, prosecutors mentioned.
David Wayne Jenkins, 38, of Austin, Texas, was initially charged with 33 felony counts of grand theft of labor, in addition to misdemeanor petty theft of labor and quite a few employment and labor code violations.
On April 27, Jenkins pleaded no contest to 2 felony counts of grand theft of labor, one felony depend of failure to transmit taxes and one misdemeanor depend of failure to keep up employees’ compensation insurance coverage, in response to the San Mateo County District Legal professional’s Workplace. The remaining counts have been dismissed with a waiver permitting the courtroom to contemplate them for the needs of sentencing and restitution.
A choose on Monday sentenced Jenkins to 364 days in custody concurrent with a two-year jail time period he can be serving in an unrelated case, prosecutors mentioned. He was additionally ordered to pay restitution of $55,761 to Care West Insurance coverage for unpaid employees’ compensation premiums, $500 for unpaid wages, $332 to a few former employees for out-of-pocket prices attributable to accidents on the job and $7,576 for unpaid tax withholdings.
Jenkins has already paid $127,944 in restitution for unpaid wages to 31 former workers and $31,000 in unpaid taxes to the Employment Improvement Division.
Jenkins began the farm in December 2019 and employed 30-40 individuals all through 2020 underneath the enterprise title Fortress Administration. Between April and November 2020, He paid his employees each two weeks and withheld taxes from their paychecks.
Prosecutors mentioned Jenkins didn't register Fortress Administration with the EDD, nor did he switch any of the withheld taxes to the company.
Jenkins stopped paying his employees in December 2020 as a result of the enterprise was failing financially, in response to prosecutors. He supplied employees with excuses for why they hadn’t been paid and continued to make use of them with out pay till Jan. 28, 2021, when investigators with the Labor Commissioner’s Workplace issued a cease work order.
The case was investigated by the DA’s Workplace, the Labor Commissioner’s Workplace and the EDD.
“Theft of hard-earned wages is unconscionable and will need to have penalties. This apply not solely steals wages from employees, but in addition supplies dishonest employers an unfair benefit over law-abiding employers,” Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower mentioned in an announcement. “I commend my staff and the San Mateo DA’s Workplace for his or her efforts to carry these perpetrators accountable and convey justice to those wage theft victims.”