San Diego Filipino caregivers won $2 million in wage judgments. Collecting is the harder job.

Paul Serrato won. The money has not shown up.

In May 2025, California’s Labor Commissioner awarded him nearly $170,000 in unpaid wages, penalties, and interest after he worked as a live-in caregiver at small elderly care homes in Poway. That was four years after he left the job and two and a half years after he filed. “I’m still hoping I’m gonna get it,” he told inewsource reporters Greg Moran and Jenna Ramiscal in an August 3 investigation. He is still waiting.

Serrato is one of at least seven caregivers with six-figure awards against Wealthplus Management Group, the company that licensed the Poway homes. Nearly all of them are Filipino. County records put the judgments at about $2 million, the largest unpaid wage pile on San Diego’s Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement list. The underlying violations stretch back to 2019 through 2022. Some of the awards are already more than two years old.

The kitchen-table stake for Fil-Am households is blunt. Care wages fund rent here and remittances home. A Labor Commissioner win feels like justice until the bank account stays empty. San Diego lawyer Ian Seruelo, who represented several of the Wealthplus workers, put the gap in one line: you can get the judgment. Getting the money is a different story.

Serrato’s path is familiar in the corridor. Born in the Visayas, he immigrated at 19, spent 25 years as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, then moved to California. In 2020 a coworker at a Carlsbad resort tipped him to the Solaris Senior Community jobs, a cluster of residential care facilities for the elderly on a tidy Poway cul-de-sac. Living on site looked like a way to save money. He had never been a caregiver.

The work swallowed the calendar. For five months he worked about 20-hour days, six days a week, bathing residents, changing diapers, cooking, giving medicine, doing laundry, and cleaning, according to the labor proceedings. He slept on a living room couch. At night he was often the only caregiver for as many as six residents. Days off still bent back toward the house. He missed visits with his parents in Oceanside.

John Polistico’s file rhymes. He worked live-in at the same homes from November 2021 through September 2022 for a flat $110 a day, on a schedule from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. He slept on a recliner or sofa near a night buzzer. The Labor Commissioner awarded him $224,000. He has not collected either.

Wealthplus founder Xiaoqing “Leslie” Wang pitched the business, on LinkedIn, as a San Diego RCFE network for qualified Chinese investors chasing recurring revenue and real estate appreciation. Four former workers, collectively owed about $1.5 million in labor awards, sued last year and alleged “corporate shell games” and a sale designed to dodge liability. Wang’s attorney said she denies the civil allegations and declined further comment because the case is pending. inewsource could not reach Wang at addresses tied to her records.

Licensing paperwork moved while judgments sat. State records show the Poway homes’ licensee changed from Wealthplus to Melrose Senior Care in August 2025. The awards still name Wealthplus because that was the licensee when the wage violations happened. A state licensing spokesperson told inewsource the agency generally weighs wage judgments only when they affect facility operations. Separate Labor Code rules let licensing departments act on long-term care employers with unpaid wage judgments after notice from the Labor Commissioner. Advocates have long said that lever is underused.

County collectors are trying a second track. Workers can assign judgments to San Diego’s Office of Labor Standards and Enforcement, take up to $3,000 from the Workplace Justice Fund while lawyers pursue the employer, and repay the advance if wages come in. The office is working Serrato’s case and two others totaling about $570,000. On July 13, county lawyers won a court order authorizing collection of $173,000 for one worker. Director Branden Butler says the office often faces professionals skilled at evasion.

The wait is not only local. A 2024 California State Auditor report found the Labor Commissioner’s Office had about 47,000 backlogged wage claims at the end of fiscal 2022–23, with a median decision time of 854 days against a statutory target of 135. Across San Diego County, unpaid wage judgments since 2017 top $30 million. Supervisor Paloma Aguirre floated adding two investigators in May, then pulled the proposal; her office says it may return in the fall.

Pilipino Workers Center organizers, including community action director Clytie Causing, helped several caregivers file. Causing calls Wang a serious violator in an industry built on live-in isolation. Seruelo notes many residential-care aides are undocumented and easier to pressure. A separate North County criminal case this spring charged administrators Rolando and Maria Corpuz with trafficking and wage theft at other facilities; Wang appeared in licensing records there as a licensee but was not charged. District Attorney Summer Stephan’s office said it is still assessing other facilities and parties. Do not mash those files into one story at the dinner table.

None of this is a claim that every board-and-care is exploitative, or that every unpaid judgment is uncollectable. Flat daily rates for round-the-clock live-in work are a red flag. So is sleeping on a couch while six residents depend on you overnight. Workplace Justice Lab research published in 2026 estimated about one in five California domestic workers was paid below the minimum wage in the prior decade. Homecare is where diaspora families meet that industry as both workers and clients.

If you work in residential care, document hours, keep pay stubs, and talk to the Pilipino Workers Center or a wage-and-hour lawyer before the exhaustion wins. File with the Labor Commissioner knowing the clock can run in years, then ask San Diego OLSE whether judgment assignment fits your case. If you are hiring home care for aging immigrant parents, ask who employs the aides, how overtime is paid, and whether the facility or agency has unpaid wage judgments on the county list. Start with Hiring Home Care for Aging Immigrant Parents Basics and Parent Care Cost Benchmarks for Diaspora Adult Children. Keep Caregiver Costs and Retirement Delay Benchmarks for Employed Adult Children beside the Parent Care Cost Planner. When Philippines family support rides on those wages, Plan Philippines Remittances in Your U.S. Household Budget and the Family Support Budget Calculator belong in the same folder.