Bernie Moreno Dogged By Reports That He Shredded Evidence To Get Out Of Paying His Employees Overtime
January 30, 2024
“That’s An Attack That We’re Going To Keep Hearing Against Moreno”
Columbus, OH – After facing attacks on last week’s debate stage for destroying evidence Bernie Moreno was legally required to keep while being sued by his employees for wage theft, Moreno hasn’t been able to escape additional scrutiny on how far he went to avoid paying his employees the overtime they’d earned. As Moreno tries and fails to dismiss legitimate questions about shredding records he “specifically agreed” to hand over to the court, it is clear that this is “an attack that [Ohioans are] going to keep hearing about Moreno.”
“It’s clear Bernie Moreno doesn’t believe the rules apply to him and is only out for himself,” said ODP spokesperson Katie Smith.
Read / Watch / Listen to what they’re saying:
Harri Leigh, Spectrum News: “A court did rule that Morneo, quote, ‘lost or destroyed evidence that [he] was required to preserve.’”
Spectrum News: “State Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, hammered opponent Bernie Moreno for allegedly destroying documents in a wage theft lawsuit against him. ‘You shredded those documents because it helped Bernie Moreno,’ Dolan said at the debate. As part of a lawsuit filed against Moreno on allegations that he did not pay employees proper overtime, a court ruled in August 2022 that Moreno ‘lost or destroyed evidence that they were required to preserve and which they knew or should have known was relevant.’”
Haley BeMiller, WVXU: “Dolan especially went after Moreno on [the overtime pay lawsuits] pretty hard, and specifically went after him on this part in one of the court cases where Moreno was sanctioned by a judge for destroying records pertaining to employees’ overtime pay while the litigation was still ongoing. Dolan said […] that Moreno can’t be trusted… That’s an attack that we’re going to keep hearing against Moreno […] and certainly this lawsuit thing has become an issue.”
The Hill: “Moreno was also sanctioned by a judge for destroying records that listed who worked overtime at the dealership he owned. A Columbus-based NBC affiliate reported that Moreno said in a deposition that he did not keep the documents he had after he sold the dealership and shredded the documents in 2020. Moreno was found liable in one wage theft lawsuit and ordered to pay more than $400,000 and settled more than a dozen lawsuits related to alleged wage theft less than a year before launching his campaign.”
WCMH: “During a debate between Republican candidates in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, state Sen. Matt Dolan accused businessman Bernie Moreno of shredding evidence against him in a court case. …The court record did affirm Dolan’s claim that Moreno got rid of evidence. ‘The inference is clear: Defendants either did not retain or shredded at least these monthly reports,’ a judge wrote in the documents.”
Business Insider: “From the beginning, Moreno was required to preserve all documents relevant to the case, and he specifically agreed to do so in January 2020 as the Adem case progressed. But during a May 2021 deposition for one of those wage theft cases, Moreno conceded that in late 2020, he had destroyed paper copies of monthly reports containing information about overtime hours worked by some employees… [T]he judge in that case, Justice Michael Ricciuti, chose to sanction him for destroying potential evidence…”
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