The U.S. Labor Department has filed a lawsuit accusing a Jessup-based contractor of deducting nearly $19,000 from employees' paychecks for retirement plans and loan repayments but failing to make the contributions to their benefit plans.
Severna Park resident Brian Hicks and his Jessup-based companies, including Trojan Horse Ltd., Capitol Expressways Inc. and Glen Burnie Hauling Inc., violated federal retirement account protection law by failing to pay employee contributions to the plan from June 2011 until the companies went out of business at the end of 2013, the lawsuit said.
Hicks could not be reached on Wednesday.
"The unpaid employee contributions and loan repayments were retained by the companies and Hicks for the companies' and/or Hicks's benefit and/or use," said the lawsuit, filed April 16 in U.S. District Court in Baltimore. "The companies and Hicks knew that employee contributions and loan repayments were not being collected by the plan, but failed to take reasonable steps to remedy the problem."
The account balances were to have been distributed to plan participants when their employment ended, the lawsuit says. The government is seeking to have Hicks and his companies restore the losses.