The owners of a mattress manufacturing company and furniture store in North Long Beach were convicted last week of stealing thousands of dollars from six employees by cheating them out of their proper wages.
Arturo Zavala, 58, and Alberto Zavala, 31, each pleaded guilty Thursday to eight counts of wage theft and agreed to pay the six workers a total sum of $45,477 within 60 days, court records show.
The payment represents twice the amount stolen from employees plus interest. Two workers will be paid more than $10,000, while another two will each be paid $6,000.
The Zavalas, a father and son who own Mattress Factory Direct at 70th Street and Downey Avenue, were sentenced to one year of probation and agreed to abide by a consent decree that can bring additional fines and possible jail time if they’re found guilty of new labor crimes in the next five years.
Between October 2024 and January 2025, the Zavalas denied their delivery drivers overtime pay, offered them less than minimum wage and in some cases failed to pay them entirely, according to court documents. One driver was still owed $4,500, while another was shorted $4,400.
The drivers were also not offered meal breaks, prosecutors said, and were not entered into the payroll system. As part of the consent decree, a third-party accountant will oversee payroll and make sure the bookkeeping is made available if the company receives any new complaints.
Accusations spanned as far back as 2022 but couldn’t be pursued as the statute of limitations on criminal misdemeanor wage theft is one year, according to City Prosecutor Doug Haubert. He said investigators relied largely on witness statements from workers to make their case.
“We appreciate the employees coming forward with information crucial to the investigation and prosecution of this case,” said Long Beach City Prosecutor Doug Haubert. “We believe there are others in Long Beach who are being cheated by employers, and we encourage them to contact us or the Department of Industrial Relations,” the state agency that investigates labor law violations.
The Zavalas’ attorney could not be reached for comment.
The investigation into the company began four months ago, by retired Long Beach police detectives Malcolm Evans and Curtis Yee, after being tipped off by a nonprofit organization about possible wage theft.
It’s the latest case to come out of the city prosecutor’s Workers’ Rights Prosecution Unit, formed in 2023 to tackle cases that experts say are incredibly common yet rarely pursued in the legal system.
An average 30% of workers in Los Angeles County are paid less than minimum wage, being cheated out of up to $28 million a week, according to the UCLA Labor Center. Victims are typically low-wage workers, often immigrants, who work desperately hard for rock-bottom pay in restaurant, retail and construction businesses.
Experts say cases are difficult to investigate, often because employees are afraid to come forward out of fear of a retaliatory firing or loss of promised back pay. Those who do try to collect what they’re owed enter an onerous legal system where claims are difficult to file and even harder to keep track of once they’re processed.
Some, even after state regulators rule in their favor, never receive the wages employers are ordered to pay. Among those who do receive back wages, only 12% are awarded the full amount, according to state data.
Police often aren’t trained to handle paper cases like these, legal experts say, leaving the work to specifically-trained nonprofits, state investigators and local offices across the state that find evidence largely through reviewing a company’s bookkeeping.
This is compounded by a 2024 audit that found the state’s Department of Industrial Relations suffered massive backlogs and slow turnarounds for investigations, with the worst state offices found in Los Angeles, Oakland and Long Beach.
If you suspect wage theft at your place of business, visit the city’s complaint portal here or go to the state’s labor website for more information.