"A Virginia-based IT staffing agency is accused of “trapping” its employees in their jobs and demanding payments of up to $30,000 if they leave before completing 4,000 hours of work, according to a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Labor filed in the Eastern District of New York last week.On its website, Smoothstack promises to train tech workers then place them in federal agencies and prestigious Fortune 500 firms such as Morgan Stanley, Verizon and Bloomberg.The company and its co-founder Boris Kiuper are accused of pushing employees to sign predatory Training Repayment Agreement Provisions, known as TRAPs, that put them on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars if they tried to quit or were fired from their jobs, and of retaliating against whistleblowers."
