A father and son who ran an Illinois branch of Huntsville-based HomeTown Lenders says the company owns them more than $1 million.

The pair filed suit Aug. 21 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Anthony Perri Sr. and Anthony Perri Jr. worked at HomeTown’s Moketa, Ill. branch.

They seek compensatory damages and interest, as well as court costs.

Attempts to reach HomeTown Lenders for comment were not immediately successful.

According to the lawsuit, the Perris association with HomeTown ended in July. Tony Sr., an employee since 2019, ran the branch, while Tony Jr. was the senior mortgage loan officer and had been there since 2018.

According to the lawsuit, HomeTown did not pay the Perris their final compensation, stopped payment on checks sent to them, and failed to reimburse them for approved expenses. They also “failed to disclose the amount of withholdings” from the Perris’ paychecks and did not account for hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to HomeTown’s deferred compensation plan, according to the suit.

According to court documents, the company stopped reimbursing the Perris for branch expenses last year. Between the two men, they have fronted expenses of more than $500,000, the suit claims.

The pair also contend that Hometown sent payroll checks returned for insufficient funds and stopped payment on payroll checks.

In all, Perri Sr. claims he is owed more than $738,000, while Perri Jr. puts his figure at more than $471,000.

In one instance, a branch employee had child support deducted from his paycheck. Earlier this year, HomeTown withheld the amount due for child support from the employee’s paycheck but failed to send the payment to the State of Illinois, according to the suit.

Perri Jr. made a child support payment of about $1,087 to protect the employee’s rights to see his children. He has not been reimbursed for this, the suit claims.

Based in Huntsville, HomeTown Lenders has more than 30 branch locations in 16 states, according to its website.

According to National Mortgage News, CEO William Taylor published a video on the company’s intranet in late May thanking some branch managers for paying rent for the company.

This came after employees claimed bills were going unpaid, paycheck irregularities and some vendors no longer providing services, such as credit checks.