Simon Honours

Workers, Beware: How To Avoid Employment Scams by Vladimire Herard Pharmacists Raj Jhala and Amr Abualnadi offered to hire her and to let her own one-third of a pharmacy upstart. And, Felicia Eddings, a nuclear pharmacist, seized the offer with Brink Healthmeds LLC, in Kansas City. Who knew that, after she started the pharmacy in 40 days, Eddings would be fired and have her contract worth $130,000 a year cancelled? Who knew her fellow pharmacists would turn on her, dissolve her 33 percent stake in the company, falsely accuse her of burglary to Kansas City police and collect $22,000 in insurance claims based on their complaint to police -- with this case ending up as the subject of a police and District Attorney’s investigation and then in court? The police and the District Attorney dropped the charges in late summer 2019. Before the start of 2020, Eddings learned that documentation proving the case existed disappeared from the state’s government website and files. With the whole world in the grip of COVID-19, a resulting global recession and attendant joblessness well underway and the cost of running businesses ever climbing, the employer practices found in Eddings’ experience are prevalent, experts say. Cara Greene, a partner and attorney specializing in employment law with Outten & Golden LLP in New York and an active member of the New York State Bar Association, the American Bar Association, and the National Employment Lawyers Association, points to a common pattern of actions taken by employers who deceive in the modern workplace. Greene takes on cases for employees in executive and professional contracts and compensation; discrimination class actions; whistleblowing and discrimination based on disability, pregnancy and family responsibilities. “Wage theft is widespread,” she said. “It is common [among employers] in different industries to terminate employment to avoid paying wages. ...We see it with startups. ... They should be rewarded and then they are let go.” Asked about the practice of shutting down companies to avoid detection of fraud or illegal actions, Greene added, “This is true of garment industries and smaller, individually owned companies. They close and open up under different names.” And employees who work outside of the typical wage-and-hour or salary setting are most likely to fall victim to employers who terminate workers over pay and then start over by seeking new ones. “It is more [common among] independent contractors than [it is among traditional employees],” she said. With respect to employers openly making references to slavery with upstarts when addressing employees’ complaints about pay, Greene said employment laws and regulations are clear. “Employers are obligated to pay wages,” she said. “Slave labor is against the law. ... Voluntary labor is against the law. This is a failure to abide by wage law [and regulations]. Under federal law, it is illegal to retaliate against someone.” A contract dated April 23, 2018 -- the day before Eddings started work -- states that none of the three parties would receive yearly salaries without a vote. “Yes, and it was pre-agreed to that I would receive a salary,” she said. “I am the managing partner. That’s why it says ‘Felicia Udoji will get a salary of $11,000 per month.’ No other partner receives a salary unless we agree to it.” A pharmacy takes four to six months to open, she said. Yet Eddings never got paid for the seven weeks that she worked for the company. By contract, she, Jhala and Abualnadi were to purchase shares into Brink Healthmeds. She said she paid $30,000 in shares in a promissory note, not cash. Eddings said that Jhala and Abualnadi wanted to dissolve the company and hold the promissory note over her head. The two pharmacists pursued the dissolution. As of July 27, 2018, Brink Healthmeds LLC was submitted for voluntary dissolution to the Missouri Secretary of State’s office and they obtained it. They seized Ms. Eddings’ 33 percent stake in the pharmacy without her consent. Additionally, Jhala and Abualnadi accused her of burglarizing the pharmacy to Kansas City police, filed a police report and then collected about $22,000 in insurance claims from Pharmacists Mutual based on their complaint to police. Eddings learned about the dissolution and sent a letter two days later to the state office. She informed them that the documents and her signature used to do so were falsified. She told the office in her letter that the dissolution occurred without her knowledge, her consent or her signature. She also retained an attorney. However, the office states -- and it told this writer when phoned and questioned -it is not authorized by law to reverse or stop a business action. Eddings would need to obtain a court order. Jhala and Abualnadi retained the services of Butler Davis Accounting, an accounting firm based in Georgia, to file for dissolution of the company in Missouri. As part of a Kansas City police investigation in December 2018, a police detective visited and interrogated Ms. Eddings at her current workplace with her employer present. Ms. Eddings refused to speak with the detective, Robert Murphy, without her attorney present. On Jan. 28, 2019, she received a letter from the Jackson County Prosecutor/District Attorney’s office, informing her that she was under investigation for the class C felony of stealing, the class D felony of burglary in the second degree and the class E felony of property damage. The letter stated that she had until Feb. 8 to get her attorney to contact the office or else she would be charged with the three felony crimes. Devastated, Eddings retained a criminal attorney. Three days later, she replied to the office in writing, charging the District Attorney’s with discrimination and with allowing her former employers to walk free from crimes of forgery, framing, perjury, conspiracy, insurance fraud and cybercrimes. When contacted by this writer, Laphilia Nicole Davis, one of the principals of the company, declined to be interviewed for this article. The Kansas City police department and Pharmacist Mutual did not return phone calls. This writer never received a response to calls to the Georgia State Board of Accounting. When this writer emailed Detective Murphy June 6, 2019 about investigating pharmacists Jhala and Abualnadi, dropping charges against Eddings and issuing an apology after a local district court dropped the pharmacists’ court case against her, he emailed back two days later that any inquiries about the case should be referred to the Office of General Counsel with the Kansas City police office. This writer e-mailed the office and obtained no response. Meanwhile, this writer contacted Merrell R. Bennekin, executive director of Office of Community Complaints of the Board of Police Commissioners, with the same inquiry. Mr. Bennekin referred this writer back to the Kansas City police department. When contacted by email and by phone by this writer, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, or FTC, and the Better Business Bureau of Kansas City, or BBB, all declined to be interviewed. To report a job scam, fraud victims are asked to file a complaint online with the FTC and the FBI. For problems with an employment service company, victims may contact the appropriate state licensing board if the companies are licensed within their respective states as well as their state’s Attorney General, their local consumer protection agency and the Better Business Bureau. Additionally, scam victims may turn to the FTC’s website for information about government job scams, fake business opportunities and work-from-home arrangements and the Justice Department’s online Directory of Crime Victim Services for emotional support. The FTC released a study in 2013 finding that fraud victims were most likely to have experienced a loss such as that of a spouse, a divorce or a job and were two times as likely to be scammed as a person who never survived such a setback. Eddings said both pharmacists breached the contract so she owes them nothing for her share in the company. She explained that she can sue them for more than that with their violation. “They were supposed to pay me,” she said. “A month later, they still hadn’t, and I kept asking about it. They said they would pay me cumulatively later. Then, five days before the recorded phone discussion, they said they would not pay me at all. “They said that ‘slave laboring’” is a normal part of the startup process. I found this offensive as I am black and not a slave. “That was the last time I’ve spoken to them,” she said, referring to a June 13, 2018 audio file from her Verizon smartphone that reveals a phone meeting between Jhala and her in which he announced her termination. Eddings said she received an e-mail, stating that she was fired for cause. To relieve her, they held an illegal meeting and took a vote without her, she said. However, she said she did nothing wrong. Beyond the audio file, they will only speak to her through their attorneys. “They attempted to fire me five days after I said I wasn’t happy with not being paid,” she said. “I say ‘attempted’ because they can’t really fire me from the company.” As long as Eddings was working, Jhala and Abualnadi had no problems with her, she said. However, when she started to ask for her wage, both pharmacists turned on her and labeled her “disrespectful.” “They also told me that they found my tone of voice and email to be disrespectful,” she said. “Of course, all of this was right after I started asking about being paid. Up until I started asking, they had no problems with me and even told me that I was doing ‘a great job!’” A clause in the contract states that employees waive their right to trial by jury. Eddings said that, if both pharmacists breached the contract and committed cybercrimes, then her right to a trial by jury is not waived. Abualnadi hacked into her accounts, she said. A Time Warner Cable Internet e-mail to Eddings dated June 15, 2018 shows that her username in her profile and account with the company was changed to haysvillehealthmart. Another email from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Web support center dated June 14, 2018 reveals that her password was hacked. Still, another email from FedEx dated June 13, 2018 demonstrates that her profile with the company was updated. On that same day, the company email address is changed from Capstone Pharmacy to one for Jhala for a company named Haysville Pharmacy. Eddings said the hours she worked were documented by an alarm system. Under the alarm system, her hours during work from home were tracked by her work products and e-mails among herself, Jhala and Abualnadi. She said Abualnadi broke into her profiles and the website administrators who sent her the emails could not intervene legally. They advised her to phone her local police. “The emails I got show that Amr Abualnadi hacked my accounts,” Eddings said. “They hacked 10 of my accounts. FedEx is just one of them. I have not had the opportunity to call FedEx and retrieve the account. The most important ones were the alarm and Time Warner.” On the question of contracts waiving an employee’s right to a trial by jury, Greene said that many workers don’t understand the implications and consequences of having such clauses in their contracts. “You can waive your right to trial by jury,” she said. “To have to go to court is being taken away. A lot of people don’t understand those provisions in their contracts. ... They would have a form of recourse. They have a private arbitration process but it is not the court system, [which affords workers] a right to trial by jury or the right for the public to know. “They have little bargaining power. This is forced arbitration. Employees have no choice. That is one of the biggest threats to civil rights. It is a recurring theme.” Greene said these practices such as in the Eddings case are possible in a modern economy in part because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in cases upholding the workplace rights of employers. As for the moves by a company to cover up their acts by changing e-mail addresses or hacking an employee’s whole online accounts to eliminate revealing work products, she said that the legal ramifications can be dire. “It does happen from time to time,” Greene said. “There are potential legal repercussions. It’s spoliation. This would be [the procedure] for companies to destroy documents. Courts can sanction that type of behavior. [These acts are] potentially damaging because [they suggest] that [the company] did wrong.” Jhala also owns other pharmacies in both Saint Peters and Saint Charles, Mo., including Saint Peters Community Pharmacy. Abualnadi runs other pharmacies in the Wichita, Kan. and Haysville, Kan. areas, including Haysville Healthmart. Jhala owns Ritescripts Pharmacy under the holding company Arc Healthmeds in Edmond, Okla. Two phone calls and voicemail messages to Ritescripts July 30, 2018 were not returned. At that time, Cody Steele, a pharmacist and owner/manager of Ritescripts Pharmacy, declined to be interviewed when contacted by this writer. Steele said he only knew Jhala in pharmacy school and only consulted with him on how to run the pharmacy. He said he knew nothing about Jhala’s nor Abualnadi’s activities. On June 13, 2018, when she was fired, Eddings filed a minimum wage complaint against Jhala and Abualnadi for wrongful termination, violation of a contract and refusal to pay her wage with the state. In response, the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations’ Division of Labor Standards states that, if it finds the pharmacy violated the state’s minimum wage law, the agency will seek restitution on Eddings’ behalf. However, when contacted, the department stated it is not authorized to sue for back wages and the office cannot lodge a claim for wages owed. Instead, workers are allowed to sue for back pay as well as damages and attorney fees. A phone call and e-mail to Jhala about the complaint July 2, 2018 were never returned. At issue for Eddings, she said, is whether they investigate complaints by independent contractors. “Brenda with the Department of Labor tried to claim that they don’t investigate violations for independent contractors,” she said. “But I don’t believe that. She also said that they are short-staffed and cannot investigate my situation until December 2018. I think she was just being lazy because they are short-staffed.” A week after Eddings was terminated – June 20, 2018 -- the company placed an advertisement with Indeed.com for a pharmacy manager, for a pharmacy named Bluestone Pharmacy. Whether Bluestone Pharmacy is actually Brink Healthmeds LLC is unclear. When contacted by email about the advertisement and its possible connection to a scam, an email from Clarissa Jones of Indeed.com dated July 5, 2018 stated that the company could not disclose any information about past ads and this writer would have to contact their legal team in Austin, Texas for answers. In terms of what employees or independent contractors should look out for, she said they should seek legal representation. “They need to talk to an attorney,” Greene said. “They need to defend their own rights.” ****************************************************************** Vladimire Herard is a health, education and nonprofits freelance writer with 27 years of experience in print journalism. Subjects include community development, community health and wellness, food and drug safety, education and tutoring, federal health insurance, minority business affairs, nonprofits and funding, the field of pharmacy, senior long-term and short-term care and aging issues and youth guidance. Herard writes for Medical Arts Alliance and the Pharm Psych Network, two healthoriented, web-based organizations catering to pharmacists, physicians, nurses and ancillary health care professionals. She holds a master's degree in newspaper from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York and a bachelor degree in liberal arts from Loyola University in Chicago, Illinois. ******************************************************************