Hot Cluckers, Taco Habitat owner faces state workers’ comp charges

Roughly two weeks following his release from federal custody, businessperson Michael Felts faces new Missouri misdemeanor charges over alleged failure to pay workers’ compensation insurance for employees at two of his companies over a period of several months back in 2022.

The Missouri attorney general’s office charged Felts May 13 with two counts of failure of an employer to insure liability under state workers’ compensation law. The charges come in connection with Felts’ Taco Habitat and Hot Cluckers restaurants, according to probable cause statements filed with Missouri courts.

Additionally, Felts’ legal troubles include criminal and civil actions by federal prosecutors in recent years, according to past coverage. He pleaded guilty in 2023 to fraudulent use of COVID-19 relief funds provided by the U.S. government including money awarded through the Paycheck Protection Program. He later received a 24-month prison sentence, according to past reporting.

Felts had several southwest Missouri hospitality ventures in recent years, among them shuttered venues including BYOPizza, Taco Habitat, Hot Cluckers, Bourbon and Beale and White River Brewing Co., according to past reporting.

In the Missouri case filed this week, Felts is accused of failing to pay roughly $5,100 in workers’ compensation insurance for employees working for Cluck 2 LLC, a business linked to his Hot Cluckers restaurants. Felts was allegedly out of compliance with the law from May 15, 2022, through Oct. 12, 2022.

Felts is also accused by prosecutors of failing to pay about $3,000 in workerrs’ compensation insurance for Taco Habitat GMP LLC employees, for a period from April 1 through Aug. 15, 2022.

Springfield Business Journal reached out to Felts by phone this morning but did not immediately hear back. No defense attorney is listed for Felts in Missouri online court records for the case.

Those court records show Felts has been summoned to a plea hearing in the case at 9 a.m. on June 22 at the 31st Judicial Circuit Court in central Springfield.

According to Missouri statute, those convicted of committing class A misdemeanors may be punished with up to a year in jail, a fine of no more than $2,000, or both.

Prosecutors noted in their charging document that violations of Missouri’s workers’ compensation law are additionally punishable with a penalty to be paid into the state workers’ compensation fund of an amount up to three times the annual premium that the employer would have paid, had the employer been insured, or up to $50,000, whichever is greater.

Felts is embroiled in other legal matters. Following his completion of a 24-month sentence on the federal fraud conviction, Felts was released from federal custody April 29 from an East Division Street halfway house in Springfield, according to past reporting.

In addition to this week’s state charges, litigation between Felts and the federal government continues in a civil case filed late last year, court records show.

In the civil case, U.S. attorneys allege Felts has failed to repay almost $8.2 million in restitution owed to taxpayers as part of the resolution to the criminal case federal prosecutors filed in September 2022. They also allege that in a bid to avoid paying the court-ordered restitution, Felts transferred assets linked to White River Brewing Co. to his former wife.

Felts is representing himself in that case, federal court records show.