A mission statement remains on the defunct website of Joined Inc., a marketing and recruiting company for Christian colleges and universities.

“Joined was founded with one simple purpose in mind, to change lives,” it reads. “Call us idealistic, but we believe that service to others is the surest path to success.”

However, some of the changed lives are those of 58 Joined employees, including many in the company’s principal Irvine office, who are left with $439,000 in unpaid wages, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

“It’s been a life-destroying experience,” said Gina Fedell, 48, a former $70,000-a-year Joined Inc. military liaison executive who is owed about $25,000. To make ends meet after missed paychecks, Fedell, a single mother, went to work selling shoes and cleaning houses; her son had to drop out of school.

“On my team, I had people lose their cars,” she said. “We set up a GoFundMe account for one of our former co-workers with stage 4 cancer after her insurance was cut off.”

The case against Joined Inc., announced this week, is one of the largest white-collar wage theft cases in Southern California in recent years, according to Rodolfo Cortez, director of the Labor Department’s local wage and hour division.

The division regularly investigates Orange County employers for failing to pay workers, but most cases involve blue-collar immigrants working for garment industry shops, home care providers, restaurants or recycling companies.

“This is definitely not your run-of-the-mill case,” Cortez said. “We don’t normally get people making up to $40 an hour as education advisers and IT guys.”

The 2-year-old company was founded by Maurice “Buddy” Shoe, 53, a former vice president for enrollment at Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City. Joined Inc.’s clients included Oral Roberts University, San Diego Christian College, Missouri Baptist University, William Jessup University and North Greenville University.

Reached by telephone at his home in Palo Cedro in Shasta County, Shoe said he was unable to pay employees after his major investor, whom he declined to name, “withheld investment money that we were promised.”

“We subsequently had issues as a result of that with some of our clients who then withheld funds. Joined now is owed millions of dollars.”

Shoe added that the employees who are owed money “stayed, understanding the situation and knowing there were big risks. Many were committed to our foundational mission of changing lives.”

At its peak, Joined Inc. employed 87 workers, including many who worked from home in San Diego and in South Carolina, Florida, Nevada and Oklahoma. The company recruited adult students mostly for online degrees, including active-duty military and veterans, by advertising on the internet, on radio and on billboards. Its counselors worked to retain students in danger of dropping out.

Joined was paid a percentage of the revenue the colleges earned from the students it recruited, as well as for related services, Shoe said.

He said he is in legal negotiations with his major investor. “There is no evil scheme here. Eventually everyone will get paid,” he said. “Timing is uncertain.”

Several employees told the Register that Joined Inc. had failed to transfer thousands of dollars to their 401(k) plans, an offense that a Labor Department spokesman said “could be viewed as a criminal case, depending on the circumstances.”

Shoe acknowledged the 401(k) contributions were unpaid and said he asked employees “to be patient. No money was stolen.”

The reassurances are small comfort to Craig Ackermann, 54, who earned six figures as a Joined Inc. vice president. The $18,000 he is owed “was going to be part of a down payment on a house,” he said.

A former science teacher at Calvary Chapel High School in Costa Mesa, Ackermann said “paychecks were being missed as early as April of last year. They hired too many people. The overhead outstripped the income.”

So far, none of the $439,000 has been repaid, and the Labor Department is unsure how the money can be recovered. Shoe said the company will not file for bankruptcy protection and has no assets.

“We met with the company in January and they agreed to pay,” said Cortez, adding the repayment rate in wage theft cases runs about 90 percent.

“The investigator walked away thinking we were done, but weeks later employees are calling. Nothing has been done. We are meeting with our solicitors to see if we can sue. We really want to make it right.”

Contact the writer: mroosevelt@ocregister.com; on Twitter @MargotRoosevelt