When Khadengra Subedi immigrated to the U.S., he said, the first job he was offered was at a Subway sandwich shop in San Francisco. Subedi, a Nepali father of two, needed to get on his feet, so he took it. In the nine months he worked there last year, he said, he never received a pay stub. Instead, he was paid $14 an hour in cash, and some months those payments didn’t come on time.
Van Buren and Gebreslasie didn’t respond to requests for comment on their personal phone number or through their lawyers. Both Subedi and another former employee, Monica Ramirez, 50, who worked at a different location for two months in 2019, said Thapa was the one they interacted with the most. Subedi said Thapa told him to lie if anyone asked him what he earned and to say it was the minimum wage.