[colorado] My Coworkers And I Suspect The Owners Of The Restaurant We Work For Are Stealing Tips. What Are Our Options?

Location: Denver, CO

TLDR; Servers are being forced to surrender half their tips, trainees are being paid the tipped minimum wage without collecting tips and they’re making us turn in all of our cash tips. What, if anything can we do about this and what can we expect the process to look like?

I say “suspect” but we’re pretty certain for a few reasons, however it’s been hard to be certain because we haven’t gotten any paystubs so far, just checks written out by hand. Keeping that in mind, some of the specific reasons are:

1. Servers have to give up half of their tips to the “house”. We originally thought it was going to the kitchen, but then cooks said they haven’t been getting tips and bartenders (my position) don’t get tipped out for drink sales at the table. Again it’s hard to tell because of the lack of paystubs but we’re fairly sure the kitchen hasn’t been getting tips and the only explanation for what “house” means is an off-handed comment by the owners that the service fee for large parties “goes to the house to cover the extra labor” so we’re naturally left thinking the owners are taking half of the servers tips.
2. Trainees don’t collect tips but are still being paid the tipped minimum wage. Another point that’s been hard to “prove” bc the lack of paystubs but after a few of us did math on previous checks it loos like all of us were paid the tipped minimum wage ($16.27/hr) without them including any tips into our paycheck instead of the non-tipped minimum wage ($19.29/hr).
3. We are not allowed to keep cash tips. The owner has been telling us we have to turn in cash tips at the end of the night with our end-of-shift report. She says it’s because since there’s no tax on tips we have to report all tips, which I get but there’s a also a way to report cash tips in the POS (Toast) without having to hand over our cash.

While we’re pretty sure that at least some of those things are illegal, we’re not sure what to do about it. One of my coworkers as “a number that past employees have called to report the owners” but that employee has stopped responses to the group chat. Some of my coworkers are also not sure if it’s worth to report the owners, so I’m hoping to get some insight into what the benefits of reporting might be. Finally i’m also open to any and all info on tip/wage theft in Denver Colorado for future reference.