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Compliance November 16, 2010
EBSA Cracking Down on Contributions not Deposited
November 16, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration announced a series of enforcement actions to protect more than $7 million for workers in retirement plans or health plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Reported by Rebecca Moore
The actions were announced along with the EBSA’s Employee Contributions Initiative, part of the agency’s Contributory Plans Criminal Project. A news release said the Contributory Plans Criminal Project is the agency’s first criminal national enforcement project targeting persons who commit fraud and abuse against participants and beneficiaries of contributory employee benefit plans.
The enforcement cases announced represent civil cases filed in federal district courts across the country to protect the contributions made by employees and matching contributions promised by their employers. In these cases, workers had contributions to their pension or health plans withheld from their paychecks, but the employers did not deposit those contributions in the plans. Instead, the employers kept the workers’ contributions and used them for their own purposes or other purposes unrelated to the plans, according to the news release.
The list of enforcement actions and more information about the Contributory Plans Criminal Project are here.