Florida - My Employer Owes Me $2,000-$3,500 In Unpaid Wages And May Have Sold The Business. What Can I Do?

I hope I’m posting this in the right place and that someone here can give me some professional advice.

Location: Florida.

I’m 20 years old. About a year ago, I quit a job where I had worked for around 6–8 months, and I was never paid for approximately the last two months of my work. I can’t remember the exact amount right now. but I have records and calculations somewhere. The unpaid wages are roughly between $2,000 and $3,500.

I worked for a small cafe company in Florida. They had four locations: three inside office buildings and one in downtown. This was one of my first serious jobs in the United States, as I originally come from Europe. I have legal authorization to work in the U.S., but something that surprised me was that the owner never asked for any of my work authorization documents when he "officially hired" me.

The owner only had me sign up for an app that tracked employee work hours, I did leave my information and documents there. However, my pay was never processed through that system. Instead, he would send money directly to my debit card, sometimes from the company account and sometimes from his personal account.

One time he attempted to withhold taxes from my paycheck. My weekly pay was around $400, and he deducted about $100 in taxes, leaving me with only $300. This was the first and only time he ever withheld taxes, despite having all of my information. After that, he never deducted taxes from my pay again, nor from the paychecks of other employees as far as I know.

Eventually, during the last two months of my employment, he stopped paying me altogether. Whenever I asked about my wages, he promised he would send the money soon. Occasionally he would send very small amounts, and unfortunately I kept believing him.

At the same time, the business was clearly struggling. Employees were quitting, and I ended up working at all four locations. One of the locations where I worked most often developed a serious cockroach problem. I’m talking about large Florida cockroaches, sometimes around 2–3 inches long. It became so bad that I developed a real fear of them. There were times when I would arrive, see several cockroaches, start crying, and call either the owner or the manager to come deal with them. To be clear, the cockroach problem was not caused by me. I cleaned the kitchen and bar thoroughly every shift and often did more than what was required. My guess is that pest control had not been done for a very long time, and the roaches were coming from drains and multiplying.

By that point, very few employees were left. Even after I informed the owner that I planned to quit, he continued pressuring and manipulating me into coming to work because they were short-staffed.

There were also other issues. He sometimes withheld wages from other employees, raised his voice at staff, behaved unprofessionally, ignored people for days, and generally acted immaturely. He never yelled at me directly, probably because I’m a very quiet and shy person and he didn’t want me to quit immediately after that, but when he was unhappy with me he would constantly criticize my work and tell me to do more while other employees stood around talking.

Overall, it was a terrible experience.

Now, a full year has passed. Maybe I waited too long, but I would still like to try to recover the wages I earned. However, there is another complication, it appears that the owner recently sold the business to someone else.

I have a lot of evidence,

Screenshots of text messages where he promised to pay me.

Screenshots of my work hours from the employee app.

Records showing the one time he withheld taxes.

Photos and videos of the cockroach problem.

and a lot of other stuff.

I also mailed him a formal letter demanding payment and stating that I would consider legal action if he did not pay me. I sent it to the address listed for his business, but the letter was returned to me.

Do I still have any legal options, or is it too late after one year?

If I file in small claims court, should I sue the former owner personally or the business itself? Does the fact that the business may have been sold affect my ability to recover unpaid wages?

What would you do in my situation, and realistically what are my chances of recovering the money?