Half Moon Bay hemp farm owner sentenced in labor theft case

David Wayne Jenkins did not pay workers in December 2020 and January 2021.

HALF MOON BAY – The owner of a Half Moon Bay hemp farm has been sentenced to nearly a year in custody for failing to pay his workers, prosecutors said.

David Wayne Jenkins, 38, of Austin, Texas, was initially charged with 33 felony counts of grand theft of labor, as well as misdemeanor petty theft of labor and numerous employment and labor code violations.

On April 27, Jenkins pleaded no contest to two felony counts of grand theft of labor, one felony count of failure to transmit taxes and one misdemeanor count of failure to maintain workers’ compensation insurance, according to the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office. The remaining counts were dismissed with a waiver allowing the court to consider them for the purposes of sentencing and restitution.

A judge on Monday sentenced Jenkins to 364 days in custody concurrent with a two-year prison term he will be serving in an unrelated case, prosecutors said. He was also ordered to pay restitution of $55,761 to Care West Insurance for unpaid workers’ compensation premiums, $500 for unpaid wages, $332 to three former workers for out-of-pocket costs due to injuries on the job and $7,576 for unpaid tax withholdings.

Jenkins has already paid $127,944 in restitution for unpaid wages to 31 former employees and $31,000 in unpaid taxes to the Employment Development Department.

Jenkins started the farm in December 2019 and employed 30-40 people throughout 2020 under the business name Castle Management. Between April and November 2020, He paid his workers every two weeks and withheld taxes from their paychecks.

Prosecutors said Jenkins did not register Castle Management with the EDD, nor did he transfer any of the withheld taxes to the agency.

Jenkins stopped paying his workers in December 2020 because the business was failing financially, according to prosecutors. He provided workers with excuses for why they hadn’t been paid and continued to employ them without pay until Jan. 28, 2021, when investigators with the Labor Commissioner’s Office issued a stop work order.

The case was investigated by the DA’s Office, the Labor Commissioner’s Office and the EDD.

“Theft of hard-earned wages is unconscionable and must have consequences. This practice not only steals wages from workers, but also provides cheating employers an unfair advantage over law-abiding employers,” Labor Commissioner Lilia García-Brower said in a statement. “I commend my team and the San Mateo DA’s Office for their efforts to hold these perpetrators accountable and bring justice to these wage theft victims.”