They already won in court - collecting the money is where everything fell apart
Five women won over $1.8 million for workplace sexual harassment. Collecting it proved nearly impossible - and an appeals court explained why.
The women had already won sexual harassment judgments in state and federal court against a group of toy companies. But the money never came. So they tried a route more often associated with organized crime than with unpaid workplace awards: they sued under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO, alleging the defendants had "engaged in a scheme to evade collection."
The case named fifteen defendants, including three companies that owed the judgments. The employees alleged the group ran a pattern of racketeering through wire fraud, bankruptcy crimes, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. Early on, the district court tossed most of that. It let only one theory move forward: wire fraud tied to what the court called a "sham consignment scheme" built on allegedly fraudulent customs forms.
After discovery, the defendants asked for summary judgment - and got it. On July 30, 2026, the Eighth Circuit affirmed.
The sticking point was causation - the link between the alleged wrongdoing and the harm. The employees argued that, without the customs maneuvering, they could have tracked down the products and seized them to help satisfy their judgments. The court wasn't convinced. Under basic collection rules, you cannot seize property unless it belongs to someone answerable for the judgment, and the employees never showed the goods belonged to any of the companies that owed them. That broke the chain.
The panel did not bless the defendants' conduct. It acknowledged the employees had "well-founded grievances concerning Defendants' apparent lack of forthrightness in this matter," but said that did not justify handing them favorable inferences as a sanction. Its read on the evidence was blunt: "the record is large, but lacking." A related conspiracy claim fell with the main one.
For HR leaders and employment lawyers, the takeaway sits downstream of the harassment itself. Winning a case is one thing. Getting paid is another. A judgment is only as strong as the assets behind it, and defendants who scatter operations across companies and countries can turn collection into a years-long grind - sometimes with nothing at the end. RICO, the court signaled, is no easy workaround.
