The owners and operators of a Massachusetts staffing firm were indicted on charges of tax and unemployment fraud months after they were initially charged with an alleged wage theft scheme, Attorney General Maura Healey announced. Robert Carrion and Fabiola Ramirez were arraigned in Suffolk Superior Court on Dec. 14; each pleaded not guilty to the fraud charges and were released on personal recognizance.

The defendants owned and operated Country Temp and Country Temp Corp., which supplied temporary workers to Coliseum Companies Inc. d/b/a Bay State Linen, a commercial laundry company in Dorchester, Mass.

Carrion and Ramirez were previously indicted in March by a Suffolk Grand Jury in a wage theft scheme in which temporary workers were not paid minimum wage or overtime and retaliated against during an investigation, according to the Attorney General’s office.

Further investigation by the Attorney General’s office found that for various time periods between March 2014 and May 2015, Carrion and Ramirez failed to collect and pay taxes and file related returns to the Department of Revenue and failed to pay over employer contributions to the Massachusetts Department of Unemployment Assistance.

According to the Attorney General, records show that over the course of 12 audited months in 2014 and 2015, the defendants processed cash payroll that included almost $1.4 million in taxable wages, which they failed to report to the Department of Revenue. This amount includes time periods in 2015 for which defendants filed inaccurate withholding tax reports with DOR, underreporting actual wages paid to their employees.

The defendants are due back in court on Feb. 9, 2018, for a pre-trial conference.