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Illinois – from www.chicagotribune.com – A suburban strip club owner serving a federal prison sentence for tax fraud is now being sued by one of his employees who said he cheated her and other dancers out of wages and also improperly classified them as “independent contractors” to avoid paying taxes.

Michael Wellek, 63, of Libertyville, tearfully apologized at his February sentencing for not paying taxes on some $12 million in cash Internal Revenue Service agents found stashed in an Elk Grove Village warehouse he controlled. The money was stuffed in bags labeled by the Wellek-owned strip club they came from — Skybox in Harvey, Heavenly Bodies in Elk Grove Village, and Cowboys in Markham.

A recently-filed federal lawsuit alleges the money also didn’t trickle down to the dancers at Skybox and Heavenly Bodies who were bringing it in. Strippers allegedly worked more than 40 hours a week but didn’t get paid overtime and had “unauthorized deductions” from their pay that meant in some weeks they weren’t paid minimum wage, according to the complaint.

Argyro Roula Manis is seeking unpaid wages from the past five years and asking that a judge allow other current or former strip club employees to join her claims. The dancer’s attorney, John Billhorn, did not respond to a messages. Wellek pleaded guilty last year to impeding an IRS investigation and filing a false income tax return in 2000.

According to his plea agreement, Wellek failed to report about $2.4 million in cash payments made to some of his more than 100 employees from 1997 to 2002, dodging about $364,000 in taxes. A judge ordered him to repay the missing taxes on top of the $5.5 million in restitution he’d already paid as part of the plea deal.

“It was greed, pure and simple, and he just didn’t want to pay,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Patrick King in February. Investigators had for years targeted Wellek’s businesses. In 2005, more than a dozen current or former law enforcement officers who worked as bouncers at Skybox and Cowboys were charged with failing to report their strip-club income on their tax returns.

Last month, an agreement was reached in U.S. Tax Court over a long-running battle Wellek waged over his 2000 tax liability. The agreement says Wellek owes $1.5 million for that year, offset by a nearly $250,000 overpayment, records show.

Wellek began his 1-year prison sentence at a minimum security prison in Duluth, Minn., in June.