BOULDER, Colo. — A Boulder man who was accused of failing to pay his contract employees and then threatening to report their immigration status to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was sentenced to four years probation and ordered to pay about $26,000 in restitution, according to the Boulder District Attorney's Office.
Chad Faubus, 43, paid $20,000 of that restitution and his probation could be cut in half if he fulfills all the terms and conditions, including paying the remaining $6,000.
He pleaded guilty to one count of check fraud in August and was initially arrested in November 2018 on charges of theft, fraud and criminal extortion.
Faubus wrote checks totaling nearly $13,000 to three different contracting companies for work that was done between February 2018 and July 2018, according to an arrest affidavit from the Boulder Police Department. All of the checks were all returned for insufficient funds, the document states.
Another contractor completed work for Faubus in 2017 and only received $1,600 even though the contracted amount for the job was $9,000, the affidavit says.
That contractor said that Faubus stated, "he wasn't going to pay because they were undocumented immigrants" and also said, "he was going to report them to immigration."
The victims reached out to another contractor on Facebook, who began working with them in an effort to get them the money they were owed. That contractor told investigators he believed "Faubus is taking advantage of [the victims] because of their perceived immigration status."
He also told police that Faubus had "threatened to contact ICE," the affidavit says. He said he reminded Faubus that he hired them and "they were entitled to be paid for their work regardless of their immigration status," according to the document.
Faubus contacted Boulder Police in October 2018 and said he did not have the money to pay the workers but he “wanted to make things right.”
He said there was a "misunderstanding" about their immigration status and he was only trying to gather personal information like Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses for insurance and workers' compensation information, according to the affidavit.
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