For five months, Paul Serrato worked 20-hour days, six days a week at a collection of small elderly care homes arrayed around a tidy cul-de-sac in Poway.
He lived at the homes, bathing residents and changing their diapers, cooking meals, administering medicine, washing laundry and cleaning rooms, according to allegations made in proceedings before the state Office of the Labor Commissioner. Serrato had no room of his own, slept on a living room couch and was at the beck and call of the residents nearly around the clock.
Eventually he filed a complaint for wage theft with the Labor Commissioner, and won a decision awarding him nearly $170,000 in unpaid wages, including penalties and interest against the owner of the homes, Wealthplus Management Group, LLC…