workers' compensation

Mr. Perez could afford slim markups because he cut corners on required expenses such as workers’ compensation payments and payroll taxes, according to interviews and two decades of criminal cases against him.

Without providing details, Mr. Perez said in his statement that BaronHR relied on third-party contractors that “misled” the staffing agency about workers’ compensation coverage or withheld wages when “clients didn’t pay on time.”

When Keurig Dr Pepper signed a new contract with BaronHR in 2019 to staff a facility in California, Mr. Perez and two of his executives were facing state charges for tax and workers’ compensation premium fraud.

Others did not receive workers’ compensation payments, records and interviews suggest.

But separately, that August, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office charged him and two of his executives with tax and workers’ compensation insurance fraud.