Metro Atlanta auto shop owner forced to pay back wages after paying former employee in pennies

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — It took a Fayetteville man nearly six months to get his final paycheck, but it wasn’t every penny his former employer owed him.

Andreas Flaten says he woke up one morning more than two years ago in March 2021 to find more than 91,000 pennies covered in oil dumped in his driveway, according to a federal lawsuit filed against A OK Walker Luxury Autoworks and Miles Walker.

The pennies came with a vulgar message and Flaten’s final paystub, the lawsuit said.

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After the pennies were dumped at Flaten’s house, the lawsuit said a message appeared on the auto shop’s website that read:

“What started out as a gotcha to a subpar ex-employee, sure got a lot of press . . . . Let us just say that maybe he stole? Maybe he killed a dog? Maybe he killed a cat? Maybe he was lazy? Maybe he was a butcher? . . . know that no one would go to the trouble we did to make a point with out [sic] being motivated.”

While a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor told The New York Times that “there is nothing in the regulations that dictate in what currency the employee must be paid,” the law does say employees must be paid what they worked for.

The lawsuit, filed by the Department of Labor in December 2021, alleged that Walker failed to follow the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 by not paying overtime rates to his employees.

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The lawsuit says that Walker continued paying his employees their normal rates even when they worked more than 40 hours in a workweek.

Earlier this week, Walker was ordered to pay a total of $39,934.18 to nine employees over a period of a year.

Walker was also ordered to post the court’s judgment and a fact sheet on the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division in a place where employee notices are normally posted for the next 12 months.

The company will also have to remove all photos and references to Flaten and the pennies from its website.

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Georgia man receives last paycheck in grease-covered pennies dumped on driveway (NCD)

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