From the same Friend of McHenry County Blog who alerted us to the problem yesterday:

Northwest Herald left a voice message explaining that a “third party” handles their newspaper distribution.

According to the message, the aforementioned district manager at that company was recently fired.

Northwest Herald collects the tips and forewards them to the company (which they did not name).

The person from NWH who left the voice message said, without naming the delivery company, that they just found out about the unpaid tips and were working with that company to ensure that it was “resolved with all of the carriers” — whatever they consider “resolved” to mean.

I’m particularly focused on the fact that they did not specifically say they would ensure that all carriers would be paid the full amount of tips to which they were entitled.  

I am supposed to receive a call from this third party company as well.

At that point, I’ll ascertain the name and location of the company, and I’ll inform them that I intend to contact the police — I’ll do so in Crystal Lake since this is where I paid the tips to NWH, and in the city where the third party company is located, if different.

Additionally, I’ll update my complaint with the Illinois Attorney General to include the name of the third party company as well as Northwest Herald. 

Adding it all up, I suspect that the third party company was dealing with a corrupt employee, and who knows all of the criminal activities this person engaged in while working for them and what exactly was the full reason for the termination.

I also suspect that the company hoped to slip all this under the rug, even while starting to pay the carriers their tips.

The individual probably escaped any kind of police involvement — companies often avoid contacting the police because they want to cover up their failure to properly manage.

Knowing more of the background, I agree with you 100 percent that the person should not escape punishment.