My question involves an injury that occurred in the state of: Washington
After 3 months of working as a server at a locally owned pizzeria I was accused of stealing from the till, stealing alcohol and participating in "shady activity" at the workplace. This came completely out of the blue, as I had busted my butt, garnered positive reviews from all of my coworkers and felt I was doing an excellent job serving. When I asked for evidence, there was none. My boss stood firm in her positition when I swore up and down I had nothing to do with missing money or inventory. She subsequently let my coworkers know I was fired and why. When I came in to get my final paycheck a few days later, she told me they were still making "deductions" off of my check from everything I "stole" and I would get a paycheck but it would be "significantly less". She also claimed they were still filing a police report on me. I told her she would be talking to my lawyer and left.
I talked with another previous employee who worked in one of the three restaraunts that the owner of the pizzeria also runs. The exact same thing happened to him- from being accused with no evidence and fired, to a fake police report and the stolen paycheck. He told me to threaten legal action, call L&I and my check would be in the mail the next day. When I awoke, my manager had texted me and in fact my paycheck was being mailed as she just wanted to "move forward" with business as usual.
The owner of these 3 restaraunts has done this same process to several others over the last ten years or so. Im afraid that this works on other people- they get intimidated into non-action and just let their paycheck get stolen by their accusers. Is there anything somebody could do to stop this from happening to others?

