Wage theft: His paycheck bounced. It got worse from there.

On a Tuesday afternoon last June, Humberto was yanking old wires from the walls of a middle school in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, when his cellphone rang.

Humberto’s wife, who had just returned from her weekly trip to the grocery store, was on the line. “Our account is negative,” she said.

The 45-year-old electrician, who spoke on the condition that he be identified by his middle name because he is undocumented, had been working 10 hours a day, six days a week as part of a $200 million renovation project. This was how he learned that his $1,250 paycheck had bounced.

And so began Humberto’s thus far unsuccessful quest to get an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work — a struggle familiar to many other victims of wage theft who battle for months or years for the money they’re due.

Companies that rely on low-wage workers are most likely to get caught cheating their employees, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of minimum wage and overtime violations from the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2019 alone, the agency cited about 8,500 employers for taking about $287 million from workers.

The contractor who hired Humberto, Mata Electric, made good on the check about a week after it bounced, he said, but it was just the first of several bounced paychecks that would push his family of four deep into debt. By the time he quit the job in August, Humberto said, the contractor owed him more than $3,500 for five weeks of work.

Humberto was forced to borrow $500 from his mother-in-law in Honduras to pay the rent. His mother, who works at Krispy Kreme, lent him money, too.

He soon began to wonder if his co-workers were also getting cheated.

“This is not something workers like to talk about. It’s embarrassing,” he said. “You’re basically admitting that you let...