Kat

https://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20190509/NEWS08/912328361/OSHA-general-duty-clause-citation-upheld-in-Berkebile-tow-truck-driver-death OSHA general duty clause citation upheld in tow truck driver’s death Posted On: May. 9, 2019 11:40 AM CST Gloria Gonzalez An administrative law judge of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission upheld a general duty clause citation against an automotive garage and towing service company after a tow truck driver was fatally injured when he was pinned between the bed of a tow truck and an off-loaded vehicle. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspected Johnstown, Pennsylvania-based Berkebile Auto Service Inc. as a result of the fatal injury and issued a one-item citation and penalty notice on May 5, 2017, to the company for violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s general duty clause, according to review commission documents published Thursday. The citation alleged that the tow truck driver was not protected from the crushing hazard in the area between the tow truck and the off-loaded towed vehicle. The company filed a timely notice of contest, with the key issues in dispute being whether it was an employer under the statute, whether there was a violation of the general duty clause and whether there was unpreventable employee misconduct related to the alleged violation. But the law judge found the company to be an employer within the meaning of the statute, affirmed the general duty clause citation and assessed a $3,803 penalty. The owner argued that the fatally injured driver leased the tow truck from his company and was not an employee, but the law judge found that the company had “general control over the drivers’ means and manner to accomplish the work,” including through its towing contracts, the tools used for towing services, service call assignments, the non-negotiable rate of a driver’s pay, limits on the use of “leased” tow trucks, the prohibition of driver advertising or self-promotion, and the initial two-week ride-along training of drivers, according to the decision. The owner also negotiated the terms of the towing contracts between BAS and its client companies, each driver’s payment from BAS was based upon the towing rates established in these contracts and the drivers had no input into the fee structure or other contract terms. “BAS had extensive control over the drivers through its owner Harold Berkebile,” the judge stated. “He provided the primary tools, the towing contracts and was the source of all tow assignments. He exclusively controlled the amount of pay each driver received. This one-sided control by BAS is indicative of an employer-employee relationship.” The company did not withhold taxes from a driver’s weekly pay, similar to those of an independent contractor relationship. But tax reporting status is not the controlling factor in an analysis under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden, which analyzed whether an individual was considered an employee under common law, according to the law judge’s ruling. In this type of analysis, the company’s control over the worker is a “principal guidepost” to determine the existence of an employment relationship. The law judge also rejected the contention that an agreement signed by the drivers demonstrated that they were independent contractors under a Darden analysis because the terms were not individually negotiated with a driver and only specified there was no employer-employee relationship for the purpose of local, state and federal tax liability. “The Agreement was a generic, boilerplate, fill-in-the blank form that only varied with the name of the Contractor (driver),” the law judge said. “It does not specify the nature of work agreed to or each party’s responsibility. BAS contends the tow trucks were leased to drivers, yet there is no mention of this in the agreement. Considering all the facets of the relationship between BAS and its drivers, I find the relationship was more akin to that of an employer-employee rather than of a self-employed independent contractor.” To prove a violation of the general duty clause, the Secretary of Labor must establish four elements: that a condition or activity in the workplace presented a hazard, that the employer or its industry recognized the hazard, that the hazard was causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm and that a feasible and effective means existed to eliminate or materially reduce the hazard. In this case, the law judge determined that there was a crushing hazard, employees were exposed to the hazard, the hazard was serious and was recognized by BAS and by the industry, and there was a feasible means to abate the hazard. “BAS did not provide adequate work rules, training, supervision of its employees or take steps to prevent hazardous conditions,” the law judge said. “Overall, the absence of work rules, training and attention to safety shows a lack of reasonable diligence.” The law judge also rejected the asserted affirmative defense of unpreventable employee misconduct because the company had no established work safety rules, it did not communicate those rules, it took no steps to discover violations of work safety rules, and it made no attempt to enforce safety rules. The owner and an attorney for the company could not be immediately reached for comment.

hmmm works now... with MS edge..

SEP 19 NY Payroll Company Vanishes With $35 Million MyPayrollHR, a now defunct cloud-based payroll processing firm based in upstate New York, abruptly ceased operations this past week after stiffing employees at thousands of companies. The ongoing debacle, which allegedly involves malfeasance on the part of the payroll company’s CEO, resulted in countless people having money drained from their bank accounts and has left nearly $35 million worth of payroll and tax payments in legal limbo. Unlike many stories here about cloud service providers being extorted by hackers for ransomware payouts, this snafu appears to have been something of an inside job. Nevertheless, it is a story worth telling, in part because much of the media coverage of this incident so far has been somewhat disjointed, but also because it should serve as a warning to other payroll providers about how quickly and massively things can go wrong when a trusted partner unexpectedly turns rogue. Clifton Park, NY-based MyPayrollHR — a subsidiary of ValueWise Corp. — disclosed last week in a rather unceremonious message to some 4,000 clients that it would be shutting its virtual doors and that companies which relied upon it to process payroll payments should kindly look elsewhere for such services going forward. This communique came after employees at companies that depend on MyPayrollHR to receive direct deposits of their bi-weekly payroll payments discovered their bank accounts were instead debited for the amounts they would normally expect to accrue in a given pay period. To make matters worse, many of those employees found their accounts had been dinged for two payroll periods — a month’s worth of wages — leaving their bank accounts dangerously in the red. The remainder of this post is a deep-dive into what we know so far about what transpired, and how such an occurrence might be prevented in the future for other payroll processing firms. A $26 MILLION TEXT FILE To understand what’s at stake here requires a basic primer on how most of us get paid, which is a surprisingly convoluted process. In a typical scenario, our employer works with at least one third party company to make sure that on every other Friday what we’re owed gets deposited into our bank account. The company that handled that process for MyPayrollHR is a California firm called Cachet Financial Services. Every other week for more than 12 years, MyPayrollHR has submitted a file to Cachet that told it which employee accounts at which banks should be credited and by how much. According to interviews with Cachet, the way the process worked ran something like this: MyPayrollHR would send a digital file documenting deposits made by each of these client companies which laid out the amounts owed to each clients’ employees. In turn, those funds from MyPayrollHR client firms then would be deposited into a settlement or holding account maintained by Cachet. From there, Cachet would take those sums and disburse them into the bank accounts of people whose employers used MyPayrollHR to manage their bi-weekly payroll payments. But according to Cachet, something odd happened with the instructions file MyPayrollHR submitted on the afternoon of Wednesday, Sept. 4 that had never before transpired: MyPayrollHR requested that all of its clients’ payroll dollars be sent not to Cachet’s holding account but instead to an account at Pioneer Savings Bank that was operated and controlled by MyPayrollHR. The total amount of this mass payroll deposit was approximately $26 million. Wendy Slavkin, general counsel for Cachet, told KrebsOnSecurity that her client then inquired with Pioneer Savings about the wayward deposit and was told MyPayrollHR’s bank account had been frozen. Nevertheless, the payroll file submitted by MyPayrollHR instructed financial institutions for its various clients to pull $26 million from Cachet’s holding account — even though the usual deposits from MyPayrollHR’s client banks had not been made. REVERSING THE REVERSAL In response, Cachet submitted a request to reverse that transaction. But according to Slavkin, that initial reversal request was improperly formatted, and so Cachet soon after submitted a correctly coded reversal request. Financial institutions are supposed to ignore or reject payment instructions that don’t comport with precise formatting required by the National Automated Clearinghouse Association (NACHA), the not-for-profit organization that provides the backbone for the electronic movement of money in the United States. But Slavkin said a number of financial institutions ended up processing both reversal requests, meaning a fair number of employees at companies that use MyPayrollHR suddenly saw a month’s worth of payroll payments withdrawn from their bank accounts. Dan L’Abbe, CEO of the San Francisco-based consultancy Granite Solutions Groupe, said the mix-up has been massively disruptive for his 250 employees. “This caused a lot of chaos for employers, but employees were the ones really affected,” L’Abbe said. “This is all very unusual because we don’t even have the ability to take money out of our employee accounts.” Slavkin said Cachet managed to reach the CEO of MyPayrollHR — Michael T. Mann — via phone on the evening of Sept. 4, and that Mann said he would would call back in a few minutes. According to Slavkin, Mann never returned the call. Not long after that, MyPayrollHR told clients that it was going out of business and that they should find someone else to handle their payroll. In short order, many people hit by one or both payroll reversals took to Twitter and Facebook to vent their anger and bewilderment at Cachet and at MyPayrollHR. But Slavkin said Cachet ultimately decided to cancel the previous payment reversals, leaving Cachet on the hook for $26 million. “What we have since done is reached out to 100+ receiving banks to have them reject both reversals,” Slavkin said. “So most — if not all — employees affected by this will in the next day or two have all their money back.” THE VANISHING MANN Cachet has since been in touch with the FBI and with federal prosecutors in New York, and Slavkin said both are now investigating MyPayrollHR and its CEO. On Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called on the state’s Department of Financial Services to investigate the company’s “sudden and disturbing shutdown.” A tweet sent Sept. 11 by the FBI’s Albany field office. The $26 million hit against Cachet wasn’t the only fraud apparently perpetrated by MyPayrollHR and/or its parent firm: According to Slavkin, the now defunct New York company also stiffed National Payment Corporation (NatPay) — the Florida-based firm which handles tax withholdings for MyPayrollHR clients — to the tune of more than $9 million. In a statement provided to KrebsOnSecurity, NatPay said it was alerted late last week that the bank accounts of MyPayrollHR and one of its affiliated companies were frozen, and that the notification came after payment files were processed. “NatPay was provided information that MyPayrollHR and Cloud Payroll may have been the victims of fraud committed by their holding company ValueWise, whose CEO and owner is Michael Mann,” NatPay said. “NatPay immediately put in place steps to manage the orderly process of recovering funds [and] has more than sufficient insurance to cover actions of attempted or real fraud.” Requests for comment from different executives at both MyPayrollHR and its parent firm ValueWise Corp. went unanswered, and the latter’s Web site is now offline. Several erstwhile MyPayrollHR employees reached via LinkedIn said none of them had seen or heard from Mr. Mann in days. Meanwhile, Granite Solutions Groupe CEO L’Abbe said some of his employees have seen their bank accounts credited back the money that was taken, while others are still waiting for those reversals to come through. “It varies widely,” L’Abbe said. “Every bank processes differently, and everyone’s relationship with the bank is different. Others have absolutely no money right now and are having a helluva time with their bank believing this is all the result of fraud. Things are starting to settle down now, but a lot of employees are still in limbo with their bank.” For its part, Cachet Financial says it will be looking at solutions to better detect when and if instructions from clients for funding its settlement accounts suddenly change. “Our system is excellent at protecting against outside hackers,” Slavkin said. “But when it comes to something like this it takes everyone by complete surprise.”

https://www.abc12.com/content/news/Payroll-company-abruptly-closes-leaving-thousands-of-employees-without-paychecks-559888671.html FARMINGTON HILLS (WJRT) (09/09/19) - The abrupt closure of a company that processes payroll for thousands of employees at other businesses is leaving people looking for the money they earned. One of them is Amanda Anderson, who has had several sleepless nights over the past week. With none of the pay she earned getting to her bank account, she is struggling to hide her worry from her daughter. "She's 11. She looks at me and says to me, 'Mom are you going to be OK?' That was hard, panicking a little on the inside while saying of course everything is fine," Anderson said. The nightmare began for the single mom of two last Thursday, when she opened up her bank account to find she the paycheck she had received the previous week had been removed from her account. Anderson immediately reached out to her employer and soon learned the problem was more than a glitch. MyPayrollHR, the company that provided payroll for her employer, had suddenly closed. "The employees for HR showed up to work to a closed office and from understanding, received an email that said, 'Hey our doors are shut, you don't have a job.' From there the accounts that they were paying from were all frozen," Anderson said. That's when Anderson found out her paycheck had been reversed twice by a third-party bank she didn't recognize -- Cachet Financial Services. "They then turned around and essentially repossessed the funds they had already paid out," Anderson said. That left Anderson with a negative balance of $800. Thousands of other employees across the country found negative bank accounts as well. "They basically tell you, well it was our money, we just took it back, sorry, you are going to have to do what you have to do, not our problem," Anderson said. https://www.foxnews.com/us/fbi-investigates-payroll-company-accused-of-stiffing-35m-from-small-businesses The FBI and the New York State Department of Labor confirmed this week they are investigating allegations that a widely-used payroll company diverted nearly $35 million in employee pay to its own bank account before abruptly closing up shop, leaving more than 250,000 employees across the country without paychecks. According to authorities, MyPayrollHR, based in Clifton Park, N.Y., shut down last week after direct-deposit company Cachet Financial Services accused it of moving $26 million from small-business employee paychecks to one of its own bank accounts. In some cases that meant small business employees did not receive their regular direct deposit paychecks at the end of August. To make matters worse, many of those same employees found their accounts had been dinged twice, leaving their bank accounts in the red. The second withdrawal was due to a technical glitch that has since been corrected, Cachet's general counsel Wendy Slavkin told NBC News. Slavkin added that MyPayrollHR still hadn't made the original payments and that's when the company called in the feds. In a cryptic message last week, MyPayrollHR told its 4,000 clients that "we are no longer able to process any further payroll transactions." The now-defunct New York operation also allegedly stiffed National Payment Corporation, a Florida-based firm that handles $9 million in tax withholdings for MyPayrollHR clients. "NatPay was provided information that MyPayrollHR and Cloud Payroll may have been the victims of fraud committed by their holding company ValueWise, whose CEO and owner is Michael Mann," NatPay told KrebsOnSecurity. "NatPay immediately put in place steps to manage the orderly process of recovering funds (and) has more than sufficient insurance to cover actions of attempted or real fraud." In Tennessee, the paycheck debacle has left Tanya Willis' animal shelter at a standstill, CBS News reported. "It hurts," Willis said. "This isn't something that we were prepared for." She said she's been trying to contact MyPayrollHR but that "all of their phone lines were down and all of their social media accounts were wiped off."

He's top 5 tanks include a beach armored recovery vehicle (number 5) and a armored recovery vehicle (number 1) at the tank museum in the UK.

Derby 2019 line up 1 War of Will 20-1 2 Tax 20-1 3 By My Standards 20-1 4 Gray Magician 50-1 5 Improbable 6-1 6 Vekoma 20-1 7 Maximum Security 10-1 8 Tacitus 10-1 9 Plus Que Parfait 30-1 10 Cutting Humor 30-1 11 Haikal 30-1 12 Omaha Beach SCR 13 Code of Honor 15-1 14 Win Win Win 15-1 15 Master Fencer (JPN)50-1 16 Game Winner5-1 17 Roadster6-1 18 Long Range Toddy 30-1 19 Spinoff 30-1 20 Country House 30-1 21 Bodexpress 30-1 https://www.kentuckyderby.com/horses/leaderboard

Tow truck goes into Sacramento River after crash, official says -- SACRAMENTO, Calif. https://www.kcra.com/article/tow-truck-goes-into-sacramento-river-after-crash-official-says/26953843 SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) — A tow truck went over Pioneer Bridge and into the Sacramento River Tuesday night after getting into a crash with a semi-truck, the West Sacramento Fire Department said. Search crews located the tow truck about 30 feet under the water, but had to call off recovery efforts for the night because water conditions were too dangerous, Battalion Chief Scott Pfeifer said. CHP - South Sacramento Released Statement - On March 26, 2019, at approximately 2023 hours, the CHP Sacramento Communications Center received a call of an overturned vehicle into the water that came from the Pioneer Bridge. The callers described the vehicle as a white flat bed tow truck that drove over the center median bridge railing and plunged into the Sacramento River. Units from the South Sacramento CHP Area office and the CHP - Woodland Area office responded to the scene. It was determined that a two vehicle traffic collision occurred on westbound US 50 just east of the Sacramento/Yolo county line. The traffic collision involved a big rig and the flat bed tow truck. After the initial collision, the flat bed tow truck veered to the left, collided with the concrete and metal bridge railing, before going over the side and falling approximately one hundred and fifty feet into the Sacramento River. The driver of the big rig stopped at the scene and cooperated with CHP personnel. Personnel from the Sacramento Fire Department, the DART - Sacramento Drowning Accident Rescue Team, Sacramento Sheriff Marine Unit and CHP - Valley Division Air Operations helicopter H-24 all responded to the area. They were unable to locate anyone in the water or on the shore. DART located the vehicle with sonar in the middle of the river approximately 30’ under water. The water conditions did not allow for any DART personnel to attempt a rescue. The South Sacramento CHP Area office is requesting the public’s help. If you witnessed this collision please contact the South Sacramento CHP Area office, (916) 681-2300. Prior Image Missing Roselyn Sharma and Shalvinesh Sharma UPDATE: "Donald Singh said his sister, Roselyn, was in a tow truck with her husband heading west on Highway 50 toward the Pioneer Bridge around the time of the crash. He fears the worst." Company Information: Justin Towing Services - Sacramento, California

https://www.wftv.com/news/local/crane-topples-onto-orlando-home-under-construction/827045150

Just look at that!

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