Employees who said they didn’t get paid turn to legal system to get what they say is owed to them

The four employees who told News4JAX they were suing the owner of a company they said has not paid them after three weeks of work have followed through with their word.

The employees thought they were hired for a match-made-in-heaven job opportunity. They were told they would work at a company called Empress Profession as a work-from-home third-party customer service representative for AT&T.

It’s been three weeks and over 25 employees working for the company are still waiting for their paychecks — something they said is affecting their livelihood.

Kennesha Bacon said she was told she could purchase her computer equipment through the company but never received it.

“She was emailing me back and forth. It never came. She told me she was going to contact me but never did,” Bacon said.

Others have similar stories to Bacon’s. The employees also said the business owner retained their personal information such as driver’s license and social security numbers.

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News4JAX spoke to attorney John Holzbaur to learn more about the employee’s lawsuit against the owner.

“It seems like it’s a little more unusual with what appears to be a number of victims, and in this case, where employees claim that they were misled, and where everything seemed on the up and up,” Holzbaur said.

We asked Holzbaur how could the lawsuit be affected if something illegal was found to be going on with the business.

“The state of Florida takes these types of allegations very seriously. They want to promote a positive business environment,” Holzbaur said. “You don’t want to see employees, especially vulnerable employees at the worker level, who are especially vulnerable and are supposed to have faith in the system and how the business system works get misled like this and possibly duped.”

Holzbaur said cases like this can take months or years to close.

News4JAX is working to obtain a copy of the lawsuit.