Lodi gas station owner must pay back wages, damages

Seven gas stations in the Sacramento area paid employees more than $340,000 in back wages and damages after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found minimum wage and overtime violations.

Darshan Mundy, the stations’ owner, “used a variety of schemes and illegal practices to deny employees their rightfully earned wages,” Wage and Hour Assistant District Director Brandon Nuess said in a news release.

Mundy would withhold pay from new employees for their first 24 hours of work, calling them “training hours.” He would not pay those wages until employees had finished a three-month “probationary period” — a practice which violated minimum wage requirements, the Department of Labor said.

Even when employees worked more than 40 hours a week, Mundy’s gas stations paid them the same flat wage for extra time, violating overtime requirements, the department said. Mundy also falsified payroll records to appear as though he paid overtime. He further broke overtime rules by failing to combine hours employees worked across multiple gas stations owned by Mundy during the week.

To make up for cash register shortages, the Department of Labor said, Mundy illegally deducted money out of worker’s pay, or took cash straight from employees who were on site.

Mundy owns four Chevron stations in Sacramento, a Chevron station and a Valero station in Davis, and a Chevron station in Lodi.