Their crimes, according to a U.S. District Court include forced labor, harboring aliens and peonage. But the bulk of the fine comes from their failure to pay the appropriate minimum wages, overtime pay and other violations of the FLSA.

Domestic employees are treated somewhat differently than others when it comes to overtime rules, but these rules didn’t apply in the Sabhnanis’ case. The court ruled the two women “workers” didn’t qualify for the exemptions because of their treatment in the house: They were beaten, had no private quarters and generally slept on the floor.

Granted, no one would defend that kind of treatment of workers. But it’s worth pointing out that as bad as the treatment the Sabhnanis dished out to their workers was — what really cost them was the lack of attention to basic employment law.

If the bill becomes law and IRS discovers you’ve misclassified someone, your company might have to pay damages to the employee (for missed benefits) and fines of up to $10,000.

With an estimated 10 million misclassified ICs out there, it’s not unthinkable that you have one or two on your books, especially if you work in certain industries, like construction, that are known to have chronic problems with classification.

To make sure your company’s not at risk, you might want to review the differences between ICs and employees with hiring managers. Key: Be sure they understand there are real penalties for confusing the two. This isn’t just about Accounting wanting to follow some esoteric procedure.

If your company has a lot of ICs who are former employees, or workers who have temporary or part-time schedules, consider reviewing their files too. Automatically classifying temps and former employees as ICs is a common mistake – if your company has done it, you’ll want to make the corrections sooner rather than later.