The owners of a Minneapolis roofing company face allegations of wage theft, insurance fraud and tax evasion tied to work at a St. Paul public housing townhome community last year.

Ramsey County Attorney John Choi announced the felony charges Wednesday, noting they are the result of a nearly year long multi-agency investigation against the three owners of Bayvista Inc.

Charged in the 24-page criminal complaint were Jose Manuel Herrera, 71, his wife, Carrie Jane Gutbrod-Herrera, 66, and his son, Joseph Earl Herrera, 41, all of Minneapolis.

“The first step was the biggest, which was to intentionally treat theft of wages as a crime rather than as a civil matter,” Choi said. “Because of this multi-agency approach, we were also able to uncover alleged crimes involving unemployment and workers’ compensation insurance fraud and serious underreporting and non-payment of taxes owed to the State of Minnesota.”

The charges say the St. Paul Public Housing Agency entered into a contract last year with Magnuson Construction for a roofing and gutter replacement project at McDonough Homes, located off Jackson Street and along Timberlake Road in the city’s North End. Bayvista subcontracted for Magnuson Construction to provide the labor.

About a year ago, workers came forward to the North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters, reporting they were not being paid the wages required by law or outlined in the project’s contract. St. Paul police began an investigation.

The complaint alleges Jose Herrera failed to pay more than $200,000 in wages owed to his workers by paying them in cash and far below the prevailing wage rates.

Jose Herrera’s wage theft was confirmed through additional investigations by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and the Minnesota Department of Revenue, the complaint says.

The BCA’s investigation found that Herrera also allegedly failed to report the payroll for his employees, along with the nature of the construction work they performed, to the workers’ compensation insurance provider for his business. In doing so, he avoided the payment of substantial premiums for insurance coverage.

The charges say the Department of Revenue found that Herrera, along with his wife and son, committed tax evasion by not reporting the over $500,000 they received from the government-funded project, as well as income they otherwise received from the family business — estimated at $4.8 million in gross revenue in 2024.

“This case is significant because it highlights the widespread harm caused by the fraudulent misclassification of workers in the construction industry,” Burt Johnson, general counsel for the carpenters union, said in a Wednesday statement. “It impacts not only the workers who were denied their rightful wages, but also the law-abiding contractors who lost a fair opportunity to compete, and the taxpayers who were deprived of critical public revenue.”

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Jose Herrera was charged with two counts each of theft of wages, insurance fraud, false representation of unemployment benefits and filing a fraudulent tax return.

Carrie Gutbrod-Herrera and Joseph Herrera both face one count each of filing a fraudulent tax return and failing to pay taxes.

All three were charged by summons and have first appearances on the charges scheduled for Oct. 2.

A message left at the business Wednesday asking for comment on the allegations was not returned.

At Wednesday’s news conference, Choi thanked the workers “for their courage and willingness to work with our investigators to tell us about what happened to them.” He said they believe there are about two dozen victims of the alleged wage theft, and that the investigation into Bayvista is ongoing.