The state of Minnesota has charged a Princeton, Minn., construction firm with workers compensation fraud after the firm claimed it had no employees for two years.
The criminal complaint stemmed from a worker's assertion that he injured his eye with a nail on a jobsite but was denied workers' compensation medical coverage.
Minnesota's Commerce Fraud Bureau investigated and the Hennepin County Attorney's Office subsequently filed a criminal complaint on Monday. It charged Nelson Israel Lopez Giron — the owner of wood-framing firm Giron Construction — with workers' compensation fraud. Giron could not be reached for comment.
According to the complaint, Giron told his insurer the injured man was not his employee. A state investigation found otherwise and concluded more than a dozen workers on the jobsite the day of the injury were directly employed by Giron's company. Bank and insurance records showed payroll of $120,000 to $2 million around the time the incident occurred, the complaint said.
Giron Construction should have paid more than $20,500 a year in workers' compensation premiums instead of the $671 minimum Giron paid to secure a bare bones insurance policy, the complaint said.
"Evidence indicates that the defendant intentionally misled [his insurance company] with respect to Giron Construction's payroll," according to the criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The worker, who was referred to anonymously in the complaint, was hammering a nail into wood at a Giron Construction jobsite in February 2020 when the nail bounced back and struck him in the eye. Giron offered only eye drops for first aid on the jobsite. When the worker said he needed medical help, Giron told the worker to lie to hospital staff about where the injury occurred, the complaint said.
When the worker filed a workers' compensation claim, the insurer denied benefits because Giron said he did not know the worker. Giron, according to the complaint, had been paying the man and several other workers in cash under the table and underreported his payroll to save on tax and insurance costs, the state said.