DES MOINES, Iowa — Local 5 continues to investigate claims that Mugsy's Pizza House has failed to pay former employees their final paychecks before closing.
As more former employees continue to speak out, they add that some received partial payments on Monday from CashApp or Venmo, after seeing no paychecks since the pizza spot closed in January.
"They told me they had to pay us out of payroll," said Kayla Busick-Mata, a former Mugsy's employee. "Then shortly after they offered me a partial payment, and I accepted it just because I don't know if I'm going to see the rest of it or not."
Even as some money starts to roll in, former employees described the struggles they have faced due to the bounced or missing paychecks.
"I'm a single parent, so not having no income kind of made it where I almost got evicted and lights and gas shut off," said Tachaye Johnson, a former Mugsy's employee.
"That was how I paid for extra groceries and gas money, so I counted on that money," Busick-Mata said. "So to not receive it and to not have any answers as to when we were going to receive it and still not knowing if I'm ever going to receive all of it or not, it's very stressful."
Former managers are also coming forward, speaking out about their experiences.
"I would go back over schedules and I was like, 'Well, yeah, you guys had this many hours and with your hourly rate minus taxes, it should've been this much', but paychecks were a couple hundred dollars short," said Kristina Garza, a former Mugsy's manager.
Managers claim they did everything they could to try and keep the Pleasant Hill pizza spot open.
"I was either not cashing my check or I was the very last person to cash my check," said Kelsey McNaney, a former Mugsy's manager. "I am a single mom of four and waiting on to cash a check is not, you know, it's not in our game plan here."
Former employees say they saw direct deposits until August. After that, they say they were paid with checks and cash. Some employees also claimed they saw no paper trail of their employment, with no pay stubs to prove taxes.
"When all this happened, I decided to try to go on unemployment, and unemployment decided to tell me I had insufficient funds for them and I didn't understand why," Johnson said. "They told me that the owners never put in that I worked at all."
One former manager was trying to buy a house and take out a loan, but said she was forced to move away because the owners allegedly couldn't provide her with pay stubs to prove her income.
"It costed me a loan, it costed me a house, it costed me not being able to find an apartment because I couldn't prove I was paying state taxes," Garza said.
Local 5 spoke with the owner on Tuesday who says they haven't heard back yet from their payroll system, but will continue to provide payments throughout the week, adding that they want to make it all right.