D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine announced a lawsuit Thursday against Azure Healthcare Services LLC for allegedly failing to pay workers what they were owed during the height of the pandemic. The healthcare company owned and operated six group homes in D.C. for residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Azure and the company’s former owners, Beth Henson, who served as the company’s CEO, and Cynthia Warren, the president and COO, are named as defendants in the suit. Henson and Warren sold the company and stopped operating on June 1, 2021. Neither Warren or Henson could be reached for comment, and phone calls to phone numbers associated with both defendants were unsuccessful.

According to Racine’s lawsuit, early in the pandemic, Azure put their six facilities on lockdown, requiring staff to work in two-week continuous shifts – meaning they would not leave the facilities for 14 days. Employees were expected to be available and working 24 hours a day during that period. They would then have two weeks off, and each employee was required to test negative before returning for their two week shift.

Henson, according to the lawsuit, informed employees during a Zoom call that they’d only be paid for 18 of the 24 hours of each day of their two-week shift, but that they’d receive an additional $3 dollars per hour in hazard pay. However, Azure failed to pay the promised hazard pay, and did not pay adequate overtime hours (time and a half), as required by D.C. law. For their two-week shifts, employees were paid 80 regular time hours and 152 overtime hours – 84 overtime hours short of what employees were owed.

In April 2021, Henson allegedly held a Zoom meeting informing employees that they’d be receiving the three dollars in hazard pay that they’d been promised from March 2020 to April 2021. But the next week, she held another meeting informing employees that she and Warren had sold the company, and the employees would not be seeing that money.

To date, employees have still not received the money they’re owed, according to the suit.

“Denying caregivers and health care workers their hard-earned wages – during the world’s deadliest pandemic – is shameful, illegal, and morally reprehensible,” Racine said in a statement announcing the lawsuit, which was first filed in Dec. 2021. “These workers stepped up and did their jobs – working long hours at the company’s request during an unprecedented time for patients in need. They deserve to get paid for that work. Azure Healthcare Services and its former owners prioritized profits over their employees’ livelihoods and well-being and they must be held accountable.”

The suit is seeking repayment to employees for the stolen wages, and penalties against Warren, Henson, and the Azure company for violating D.C. law.

The suit marks Racine’s second legal action in 2022 against companies accused of stealing workers’ wages. In late January, Racine’s office sued Arise Virtual Solutions, a customer service company used by AirBnB and Disney, for allegedly illegally classifying workers as independent contractors.