The Boston Water and Sewer Commission’s embattled HR Director Marie Theodat, embroiled in three civil lawsuits that include fraud allegations, has seen a whopping 61% pay hike since 2019 and was recently promoted, city records show.

Theodat saw her salary, listed as $126,000 in April 2019, jump to more than $200,000 this year, through a series of  raises over that 4-year period, according to BWSC payroll data obtained by the Herald through a public records request.  The Commission has had little to say about the promotions, and Mayor Michelle Wu’s office is distancing itself from the matter.

Theodat’s current salary is $202,873, according to the records which show a nearly 27% increase in her pay from 2023, when she was making about $160,000 at the Water and Sewer Commission. The Commission is a quasi-public agency overseen by a board of commissioners appointed by the mayor with approval of the City Council.

By comparison, Mayor Michelle Wu’s salary is just 2% higher, at $207,000. Both Herald and city payroll records show that Theodat makes far more than other human resources executives in the City of Boston, with the highest earner listed as an HR supervisor of personnel who was paid $157,384 last year.

Theodat’s salary was the subject of a motion filed this month by her attorney, who sought to bar reference to her six-figure pay during a trial that began last week in Suffolk Superior Court for a 2020 lawsuit that alleges Theodat stiffed a woman on a $75,000 mortgage loan.

Commission records also show that, weeks before a trio of BWSC employee unions pushed for Theodat to be placed on administrative leave and stripped of her ability to handle sensitive employee information like social security and banking numbers after fraud allegations in another civil lawsuit came to light, Theodat was promoted. That promotion, effective Sept. 1, was to chief human resource officer.

Her prior position in public records was listed as director of human resources, and the promotion was confirmed by a BWSC spokesperson on Friday.

Theodat rose in the ranks at work while two civil lawsuits she’s embroiled in were pending in court.  A third was filed in August, and she was promoted to her current position weeks later. The third civil action is a higher-profile complaint that alleges she worked with relatives to swindle her elderly and dementia-ridden uncle out of his $1.1 million Dorchester home.

The new lawsuit, filed in Superior Court on Aug. 20, alleges Theodat “fraudulently induced” her uncle to sign over the deed to his longtime home for “less than $100” under the “guise” he was signing documents related to his medical care.

Theodat has denied the charges in the lawsuits. She did not respond to a request for comment on her payroll records.

The Herald pitched questions to the Boston Water and Sewer Commission about Theodat’s pay hike and promotion, in terms of whether they were performance-based or contractual — although supervisors are typically not part of unions — and if BWSC plans to act on the unions’ recommendations to suspend Theodat pending the findings of a requested internal probe and while the cases against her play out in court.

“Marie Theodat is an active employee with Boston Water and Sewer Commission,” a BWSC spokesperson said in a Friday statement, but declined to comment, aside from confirming the promotion, on the remainder of the Herald’s questions.

Theodat is also alleged to be in violation of the Commission’s residency requirement, per the August lawsuit, which lists her as living in Milton, the home that is connected to the $75,000 mortgage loan she is alleged to have defaulted on in the 2020 case that is still being hashed out in court. According to the lawsuit, she misrepresented her address as being in Hyde Park to “circumvent” the requirement.

Thomas McKeever, president of SEIU Local 888, one of the unions that pushed for the agency to take action in an October letter to Commission Executive Director Henry Vitale, declined to comment for this story, but told the Herald last week that Boston Water and Sewer is “not taking any measures as it relates to our recommendations.”

“Honestly, if this were our members, they would sincerely be terminated,” McKeever said when speaking about the letter last month. “We feel as though these allegations are so severe that the Boston Water and Sewer leadership should take some type of action.”

Boston Water and Sewer Commission brass sat down with the unions last month, and the agency later released a statement indicating that the civil cases leveled against Theodat have no bearing on her employment.

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The prior BWSC statement reportedly said Theodat “has been a valued employee for several years and is responsible for modernizing our human resources system.”

“While we always take our employee feedback seriously, these are unsupported allegations in a private legal matter that will be addressed through the proper forum,” the Commission’s statement, released in October, said.

Mayor Wu continued to distance herself from the matter when her office was asked by the Herald whether the city sees things the same way, or plans to get involved.

“The City of Boston doesn’t administer the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, fund or oversee their budget, nor handle hiring, employment, and payroll of their staff,” the mayor’s office said in a statement. “The Water and Sewer Commission is a separate employer with separate enforcement mechanisms, and it is not under the purview of the City of Boston.”

The BWSC was created by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1977, replacing separate water and sewer divisions of the city’s public works department.