DENVER — Jogan Health, LLC, an Englewood-based healthcare staffing company that the state — without verifying past work experience — paid $72 million for COVID-19 vaccination services, intentionally falsified wage records and willfully violated wage laws, a Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) investigation concluded.
While the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) insists it did extensive vetting of Jogan Health, a Denver7 Investigation published in June revealed that Jogan Health did not have the experience it referenced in its application for a state contract. Denver7 confirmed the three entities Jogan Health claimed to have done work for never worked with the company.
CDPHE halted all work with Jogan Health several months before the contract was supposed to end, amid mounting concerns, which included worries about the company's payroll practices.
Several former Jogan Health employees shared their experiences with Denver7 within the last year, claiming the company owed them wages they worked for, which, in some cases, amounted to several thousands of dollars.
CDLE began an investigation after a former employee filed a wage claim, alleging she was owed roughly $7,000 in unpaid wages for work done between September 2021 and November 2021.
Denver7 Investigates dug deeper into the company's owner, Dan Dietrich, and his other companies, and discovered that millions of dollars were being spent on luxury homes during that period.
In September 2021, Jogan Properties, LLC purchased a 22,000 square-foot home in Parker. Records show Dietrich formed the company one day before the purchase.
Three months later, another company formed by Dietrich called Jogan Properties Hawaii, LLC purchased a $3.5 million beachfront property in Hawaii.
According to Scott Moss, director of CDLE's division of labor standards and statistics, the agency determined that Jogan Health, LLC violated the Colorado Wage Act and the Colorado Overtime and Minimum Pay Standards Order.
"The findings include that at the company, there was a directive to not record certain hours that the company knew were worked in order to make it appear that fewer hours were worked and had to be paid for," he said.
Moss said the investigation, which concluded in September 2022, concluded the violation was intentional and willful.
"There was a finding that there was intentional falsification of records that occurred, and that led to the claimant being underpaid money that, eventually, the company paid up when the labor department put them under investigation, but that triggers penalties for a willful violation," Moss said. "The law defines a willful violation as a violation that was done either with knowledge of its illegality or by an employer that should have known that the failure to pay was illegal and based on facts of the case. The finding was that this does qualify as a willful violation, which increases the penalties owed to the worker by 50%."
Jogan Health, LLC paid the claimant in this case $7,000 in wages owed and an additional $6,000 in penalties.
Denver7 confirmed with several other former employees that the company paid them the wages they claim they were owed, outside of a CDLE wage claim investigation, but Denver7 has been unable to confirm how many other former employees have similar claims that have or haven't been resolved.
CDLE confirmed it has launched a "broader systematic" investigation into Jogan Health, LLC — a rare move unless otherwise warranted.
"We view this as a significant finding, in that there's a finding of several thousand dollars not paid due to falsification of time records that the company executed to have certain hours not be compensated to hit some limit on the number of hours they wish to pay for. And that made this a significant violation," Moss said. "This is something we want to look into. We don't have a conclusion about the extent of any systemic violations. We received a number of leads and complaints, and there's always the possibility something was just individualized ... or there's a possibility of something systemic. And that's what we're still looking into now."
Denver7 reached out to Dietrich and Jogan Health's spokesperson three times within the last two weeks after learning about the wage law violation and has not received a response.
Jogan Health has until the end of the month to appeal CDLE's findings. Two additional wage claims against the company are pending, CDLE confirmed.
Over the summer, Jogan Health settled a lawsuit filed against them by Safety Management, LLC — which Jogan Health listed on its application for the state contract. Safety Management alleges civil theft, fraud, and breach of contract.
On Wednesday, Denver7 learned there is at least one other lawsuit against Jogan Health, which was filed last month.
Wright Security Enterprises, LLC, an Oregon-based security company, alleges it's owed more than $700,000 from Jogan Health after providing security at COVID-19 testing locations in Clackamas and Washington counties and several other locations in Oregon.
