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Indictment charges company with conspiring to suppress nurse wages

Updated March 30, 2021 - 6:30 pm

A federal grand jury in Las Vegas indicted a health care staffing company and a former manager Tuesday after prosecutors accused them of engaging in a conspiracy with a competitor to fix school nurses’ wages.

The grand jury charged VDA OC LLC, which was formerly Advantage On Call LLC, and its former regional manager Ryan Hee of Las Vegas. The one-felony indictment was filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.

Attempts to reach a representative of the company for comment Tuesday evening were unsuccessful.

Advantage was one of two companies providing contract nursing services to the Clark County School District during the alleged conspiracy from October 2016 through July 2017, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a news release.

Hee and a co-conspirator “agreed not to recruit or hire nurses staffed by their respective companies at Clark County School District facilities and to refrain from raising the wages of those nurses,” according to the news release.

The investigation was conducted by the Department of Justice’s antitrust division and the FBI, with assistance from the U.S. attorney’s office.

According to the new release, the maximum penalty for violating the Sherman Act — an antitrust law — is 10 years in prison, and a $1 million fine for individuals or $100 million for corporations.

“When employers conspire to allocate employees and fix wages, it robs American workers of higher pay and the ability to bargain for better, higher-paying jobs,” said Richard Powers, acting assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. “Ensuring that American workers receive the benefits of free and fair competition is a top priority, so we will use every investigative tool at our disposal to investigate these crimes and prosecute perpetrators to the full extent of the law.”

Christopher Chiou, acting U.S. Attorney for Nevada, said his office will prosecute employers that conspire to suppress wages and will protect the state’s labor market against “illegal wage-fixing and no-poach agreements.”

Contact Julie Wootton-Greener at jgreener@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2921. Follow @julieswootton on Twitter.

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