The U.S. District Court for the District of Utah has ordered Kyco Services LLC and its owner Kyle Morris to pay $550,000 in back wages and liquidated damages to 267 employees for willfully violating the overtime and recordkeeping provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The court also ordered the drywall company to pay $100,000 in civil money penalties.

The action follows an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) that found Kyco Services paid employees on a piece rate, without regard to the number of hours that they worked. When employees worked beyond 40 hours in a week, the employer failed to pay them overtime. Company payroll records, however, falsely showed that the company paid employees hourly rates near the minimum wage, with overtime paid at time-and-one-half, and additional bonuses paid each pay period. The employer generated these records to create the appearance that they were paying overtime, when they were in reality calculating retroactively to arrive at amounts that matched the pre-determined piece rates.