BOSTON (Legal Newsline) – Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced May 24 that Search Fund Accelerator (SFA) and its President Timothy Bovard and Treasurer Jeremy Silverman will pay $550,187 to settle allegations of violating the state’s wage and hour laws.
The settlement funds will go toward 174 current and former employees.
Healey’s office alleged that the defendants used improper employee classifications so as to not pay those employees minimum wages. The affected employees were classified as interns but, according to Healey, the workers did employee-level work and should have been paid a minimum wage of $9 per hour in 2015, $10 per hour in 2016 and $11 per hour in 2017.
“This private equity firm should have paid its employees, but instead treated them like unpaid interns,” Healey said in a statement. “I commend the employees at SFA for speaking up for themselves and their co-workers. We encourage all others who believe they are part of an illegal internship program to contact my office so we can ensure these workers know their rights.”
Handling the case for Massachusetts were Assistant Attorney General Drew Cahill and Investigator Huong Phan, both of the Fair Labor Division.