A owners of a Pasadena restaurant stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from more than a dozen employees, according to a U.S. Department of Labor complaint filed in federal court last month.
The Department of Labor alleges that Jean-Christophe Febbrari and Mathias Wakrat, the owners of Entre Nous French Bistro, “knowingly and willfully withheld a portion” of tips that were supposed to go to their workers, and instead used the money to fund business expenses.
Febbrari and Wakrat collected credit card and cash tips from customers and automatically deposited the funds into a business account, a U.S. Department of Labor investigation found. They also collected cash tips, stored them under a cash register and then deposited them into their business account, according to the complaint.
Only a portion of the tips were distributed to staff, “through a Zelle wire transfer on a weekly basis,” according to the Feds.
For example, in December 2021 customers left more than $12,000 in credit card tips to employees. Only about $7,500 of that money went to staff. The rest was used for “other purposes,” according to the Department of Labor’s complaint.