§ 706.152.Employer's Failure to Pay Earnings Over to Levying Office With Intent to Defraud

Withholding money from a paycheck under a garnishment order is only half the job; the employer also has to pay it over. This section makes deliberately failing at that second step a crime: if an employer withholds earnings under this chapter and, intending to defraud either the creditor or the debtor, keeps the money instead of forwarding it, the employer is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Intent to defraud is the key element. An employer who withholds correctly but misses the payment deadline through error or oversight hasn't committed the crime this section defines; that's a compliance failure addressed elsewhere, including through the civil remedy in § 706.154. This section targets the employer who takes the money and means to keep it from whoever it belongs to.