A strip-club owner is getting sued for grabbing his dancer’s tips for himself.
Two ex-strippers at Cheetah’s Gentlemen’s Club & Restaurant in Times Square slapped Sam Zherka who is already under indictment for lying on a loan application with a class-action lawsuit in Manhattan federal court on Friday, claiming he denied his dancers legal wages.
Following the blueprint of similar suits that have recently brought in multimillion paydays for plaintiffs, the ex-strippers allege Cheetah’s is breaking the law by classifying dancers as independent contractors not in-house employees to avoid paying minimum wage and overtime.
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Justin Swartz, who represents the dancers, said thousands of strippers who strutted their stuff at Cheetah’s over the past six years are eligible to join the class-action lawsuit.
Prosecutors say Zherka allegedly made off with more than $146 million in loans from three banks between 2005 and 2010 by lying on applications. He’s also charged with participating in a decade-long tax-fraud scheme, threatening a potential government witness in April 2012 and other crimes.