Merchant Industry Avis 

Merchant Industry’s Craig Benabu harassed me on May 23 when he invited me for lunch and asked me who do I live with, do I leave alone, after I said I do not leave alone, he continued said that “You do live by yourself!”

I was working full-time on 7/15/2025 and feel harassed by the Craig Benabu after work at 6pm who prevent me from going home after I said I have urgent things to do, and it is already off-work time, but he said loudly that “You cannot leave!”.



On 7/16/2025, When I tried to talk about the harassment, Craig Benabu interrupted and refused to let me talk. I tried to find my employee handbook for HR's email which is saved under my Gmail account, because when new hire is onboard, the company asked me to register their Paychex.com system to access employee handbook, HR issue report, and payment.



I told him I needed to access my Gmail, but Craig Benabu took away the keyboard from my hand very harshly which and hurt my hands and make me feel threatened, he asked me to leave the office saying “You can leave now!”, and then he hacked my personal Gmail account and deleted the employee handbook from my personal Google Drive, which prevent me from contacting HR for harassment I emailed the manager, the company’s CEO, owner, and HR several times, but they didn’t respond.

And later I found HR email in employee handbook is a fake email address, the HR email address do not exist and bounce back all emails. They also didn’t pay my wage on 7/16/2025, I asked for Ellie Sadighpour several times about my wage, but Ellie Sadighpour replied to me that “She’s back” in her email in a joking way.

Merchant Industry's HR is a wage theft, she refuse to pay employee and after employee asked her to pay back the missing wage, she replied email to employee that "she is back..." /9see attachment of her response)

Merchant Industry's staff in the marketing department is an identity theft. He breaks the federal law - 18 U.S.C. § 1028: This federal statute criminalizes identity theft, making it illegal to knowingly transfer or use someone else's identification with the intent to commit a crime or facilitate other unlawful activities.

This marketing staff harassed other employee and prevent her to go home after 6PM after she said several times she has an emergency. When the employee tell them she want to leave since finding a new job, Merchant Industry's marketing staff logged into this employee's personal Gmail account which is illegal, and deleted hundreds of this employee's personal files, including passport, personal photos, HR handbook, and many other personal files at the time stamps of 11:21am, 11:23 am on July 16, 2025, assuming this employee wouldn't know.

After this employee sent several emails to ask this staff to return her files and log off her email, this staff continued to log in in day July 16, and the next day July 17. This behavior has broken either the company policy or the federal law.

The IP address and action history are stored in each individual's Google account as evidence, the IP from the MI office tells everything they hacked. They conduct a violation of privacy publicly in the New York office.

So far I'm not sure how much of my PII is stolen or being made a copy. Everyone please be aware of identity theft in their office in marketing department, check the office camera and see who was sitting in front of the desk at 11:21am, 11:23am on July 16, and continued July 17, 2025 to steal other employees' personal documents.

So far Merchant Industry still kept my personal documents and hasn't send them back to me, and afraid to reply my emails. Please contact me directly if you find the identity theft.

The evidence speaks for itself. I attached a screenshot of this marketing person logging into another employee's Gmail account several times from Merchant Industry's IP address when the employee is not at the office. And after this marketing staff was reminded several times to log off, he continued on July 17 to log in other employee's email address from Merchant Industry's computer.

We've been with Merchant Industry for over a year, and they’ve made a significant difference in our daily operations. Their processing system is fast and secure, which is crucial for our high-volume sales.

integration with our accounting software was seamless, saving us time and reducing manual errors. What really stands out is their customer service. Any time we've had a question or needed support, they've been incredibly responsive and resolved issues.

The team is knowledgeable and always willing to help, which makes a big difference when you're running a business. I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a reliable payment processor.