SEATTLE—A Lynnwood Times investigation uncovered that dozens of employees working for a subcontractor under Sound Transit were cheated out of millions of unpaid wages while working on janitorial services at several transportation sites related to the Link light rail.
Employees of Jusalis House Cleaning – a subcontractor brought on by Dexterra, in turn a contractor under Sound Transit — were working 8-10 hours daily, seven days a week, including holidays with no rest days. Workers were also being paid $20 an hour rather than the prevailing wage rate of $29.33 for janitorial work on the public light rail project.
In Washington, companies are legally required to track paid sick leaves for each employee, effectively maintaining a sick leave “account.” In the state of Washington employers must provide a statement to each employee showing their earned, used, and available sick leave hours. This is typically included on a regular pay stub…but workers never received pay stubs.
The house cleaning company was also issuing personal checks with no tax deduction, raising concerns about payroll, tax fraud, and improper record-keeping. These checks would be issued on an irregular schedule, initially promised on the 10th of each month, but workers would go a total of two months without pay. Workers were later told the checks would come on the 20th of each month but payments consistently arrived late, several days from the promised date.
“Eventually it progressed to being late a month or more,” a worker, who asked to remain anonymous, informed the Lynnwood Times.
When workers raised concerns about late pay, they were told “if you don’t like it, you can leave,” according to some workers interviewed by the Lynnwood Times.
Some workers consulted with a compliance attorney, but that attorney denied the case, given he wasn’t knowledgeable enough about prevailing wage cases, the workers interviewed informed the Lynnwood Times.
It should be noted that Jusalis House Cleaning is also operating without a valid business license as confirmed by Washington Labor and Industries.
Following the money
The Lynnwood Times sat down with three former Jusalis employees who were able to provide copies of their paychecks and time sheets for review.
One worker – who we’ll refer to as Worker A to protect anonymity — recorded his hours for February, clocking, 7.5 hours each day from February 2, 2025, through February 27, 2025 (with no days off). This amounted to a total of 82.5 hours at a pay rate of $20 an hour. Prevailing wage rate in Washington is $29.33 an hour.
The daily shift was from 7 a.m. until 3 p.m. (eight hours) but Worker A’s employee deducted .5 hours for lunch, thus the 7.5 total.
In the month of March, he worked a total of 232.5 hours (182.5 regular and 50 overtime) and was paid a total of $4,650 for the month. His check should have been $6,819.225 at prevailing wage alone, not including overtime.
In April he worked 315 hours and was paid $6,300 but at prevailing wage he should have been paid $9,238.95.
In May he worked 225 hours and was paid $4,500 but should have been paid $6,599.25.
This continues every month until September, 2025. Workers received absolutely no payment for the work they did in the months of November and December, 2025 and have yet to receive payment to this date.
“I would have to go out and borrow money from friends and family. Even my rent, my landlord said he would let me go another month, but he would charge me interest on the late payment,” Worker A informed the Lynnwood Times with the help of an interpreter.
What’s more, the pay that was awarded to Worker A, in each of checks, was the exact amount of being paid $20 an hour, meaning either no taxes had been taken out or he was being paid even less than $20.
“After about 90 days of not receiving a paycheck, my employer [Francisco Vargas] showed up and gave me a check but he said that him and his wife were about to go on vacation and not to cash it until after they got back,” said another worker, who we’ll refer to as Worker B, with the help of an interpreter. “Then he said if we did try and cash the check before he got back, and was hit with insufficient funds or late charges, that he would take it out of my paycheck.”
After reviewing pay records, the Lynnwood Times was able to confirm at least two other workers had similar records, being paid $20 (or less) an hour with no overtime, no holiday pay (pay stubs indicate federal holidays were worked), and no taxes taken out of their checks.
However, according to the workers interviewed there were about 25 employees in total who were cheated out of pay. Currently there are approximately 12 employees continuing their janitorial work for Sound Transit under a different subcontractor.
In total this amounts to about $80,000 of unpaid wages, which only includes unpaid overtime and holiday pay. Including penalties and Washington paid sick time, this amounts to $100,000 per individual.
A complaint was filed with L&I, regarding prevailing wage rate, in November of 2025. According to a third worker interviewed, when L&I reached out to Jusalis during its investigation, Co-Owner Francisco Varga informed them that all of the money owed had been paid. According to Jusalis employees, this was not true.
“That wasn’t true. It’s my understanding that Vargas took the money owed and spent it while he was on vacation,” a third worker, who we’ll name Worker C, told the Lynnwood Times.
Worker C added that whenever workers would confront Vargas about their pay, he would threaten them with termination and subsequent retaliation preventing them from getting jobs with another company in the region.
The owners of Jusalis have criminal records and history with wage theft
Chauntelle Aaryanna Drury, the Owner of Jusalis House Cleaning, has a criminal arrest, one judgement/lien, and two real properties on her record, according to Lexis Nexis.
She purchased a house in Tulalip in 2024 for $795,000.
She was arrested in 2018 for driving with a suspended license. This was later amended in Bothell Municipal Court to be driving with no valid license or valid ID.
She was also issued a state tax warrant in 2024 in the amount of $2,773.00.
Aaryanna Drury’s partner, and co-business owner, Francisco Vargas – who, despite Jusalis being under Aaryanna Drury’s name in the Secretary of State’s database, has been overseeing the operations at Jusalis — also has a history totaling 17 criminal arrests, one declaration of bankruptcy, one judgement/lien, and two foreclosures/notices of default on his record. His criminal charges include assault, drug possession, driving under the influence, driving without an interlock device and driving without a proper license, and public intoxication.
In April of 2026 Aaryanna Drury was served with a breach of contract by YMT Funding LLC in Monroe County, New York when after she stopped making payments to the funding institution.
And, according to Better Business Bureau, her house cleaning services Jusalis currently has an F business rating for failure to acquire both a necessary license from the U.S. Department of Transportation and a necessary license from the Washington Department of Labor and Industries.
In January of 2025, Fair Work Center ran a story on Jusalis House Cleaning Services reporting that owner Aaryanna Drury is no stranger to wage theft. Their story featured a Seattle worker, by the name of Wendy, who was hired on by Jusalis House Cleaning to clean the common areas of the Thompson Hotel in Seattle, which is owned by Hyatt.
Wendy, the article states, showed up to her shifts working overnights for two months straight. But when she left, she noticed she had been missing approximately $1,000 to the pay she was owed. According to the article Jusalis admitted they owed Wendy the money but instead of agreeing to paying it in full the company decided to make retaliatory threats.
The Fair Work Center filed a wage lien against the real property of the Thompson Hotel for $4,200, an amount that included Wendy’s unpaid wages and damages allowed under Seattle’s wage theft ordinance.
At first, they said, Hyatt disputed that the lien was valid, stating they had no record of subcontracting with Jusalis House Cleaning, and by extension never hired Wendy to begin with. However, when the Fair Work Center argued that the employment structure is irrelevant under the Washington wage lien statute; if a worker “maintained” someone’s property (which includes cleaning) without full compensation, the lien can be filed against the property owner(s), even if they weren’t the employer. Hyatt agreed to pay Wendy a total of $3,500 for her unpaid wages and some extra for the hassle and losses related to waiting to be paid.
Background of Jusalis with Sound Transit
Sound Transit entered into a five-year contract with Dexterra Services LLC on July 18, 2024, to provide agency-wide janitorial services in the amount of $26,075,093 and $15,944,200 in future expansion capacity, for a total authorized contract amount not to exceed $42,019,293.
The contract includes comprehensive janitorial services for all Sound Transit train stations and was to be paid with funds from the Operations Department’s annual operating budget.
Sound Transit receives approximately $2.48 billion annually in taxpayer revenues, which accounts for 75% of its total $3.3 billion operating and financing budget.
According to Sound Transit, in its motion number M2024-44, the transportation agency received a total of six bids for the contract and Dexterra was determined to be the highest ranked firm and offered the best value to Sound Transit.
“Dexterra Services LLC pricing is fair and reasonable based on the independent cost estimate completed by Sound Transit staff and as compared with the pricing provided by other proposers,” the motion states.
Dexterra then subcontracted out to Chauntelle Drury-Jones and Francisco Vargas’ Jusalis House Cleaning but was notified by L&I that there was an issue with Jusalis’ account status. This noticed went ignored.
Dexterra has not filed certified payroll reports for Jusalis nor did they disclose Jusalis was a subcontractor on their Statement of Intent to Pay Prevailing Wage, in violation of reporting and compliance requirements.
Jusalis still remains active on the Sound Transit project through Dexterra’s subcontracting, despite being unlicensed and undisclosed.
They are currently being investigated by the Washington State Labor and Industries.
Dexterra has since terminated Jusalis as one of its subcontractors and replaced it with a company called Global. Some of Jusalis’ former employees (about 12) are now employed by Global Cleaning Services, continuing their janitorial work for Sound Transit.
So far, according to the workers interviewed, Global has been paying these workers prevailing wage ($30 an hour), with checks consistently every eight weeks.
The Lynnwood Times reached out to Jusalis, and Dexterra for comment, but did not receive a response.
The Lynnwood Times also reached out to Sound Transit but the transportation agency was not able to get a response back by our publication date. We’ll update this article with an editor’s note as soon as we do.
A new bill could change the landscape of wage theft in Washington
Last legislative session Washington Representative Julio Cortes introduced a bill (HB2119) that would allow an employee to seek recovery of unpaid wages from an employer by filing a private suit under the Minimum Wage Act. The law would also protect employees from retaliation from their employers if a claim was to be brought forward.
That bill received a public hearing on January 14 and entered the House Committee on Labor & Workplace Standards later that month. It was returned to the Rules Committee for a second reading in February but did not advance.
Rep. Cortes plans to bring the bill back to session next year if re-elected.
Author: Kienan Briscoe
