A lawsuit and a federal probe are the latest developments in a saga that began in February at Microtech Computers when about 15 employees left the computer manufacturer’s Atipa Technologies division.

The West Lawrence company is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor regarding allegations of unpaid overtime. And Microtech officials have filed a lawsuit in Douglas County District Court against two former employees who they allege sabotaged the company’s computer system and stole customer files and other trade secrets.

Dana Chang, vice president of technology for Atipa, said she was confident the Labor Department would find no wrongdoing at the company. She confirmed that investigators were examining whether the company had improperly placed employees on a salary when they should have been entitled to hourly wages plus overtime benefits.

“Everybody has been classified properly,” Chang said.

Company officials were scheduled to meet with the Labor investigators next week, when Chang said she expected the company to receive a clean bill of health. Labor officials declined to comment on the investigation.

The Labor investigation was spurred, Chang said, by unfounded complaints from former employees who left the company to work for a Eudora-based startup computer firm. She contends the former employees were part of a conspiracy to damage Atipa’s business for the benefit of the new company, Team HPC Inc.

“They’re just not happy that our company continues to do well,” Chang said.

Microtech officials on May 25 filed a civil lawsuit against two of the former employees, Bret Stouder, Eudora, and Jason McGaugh, Lawrence.

The lawsuit contends the pair masterminded a conspiracy to take the company’s customers, trade secrets and confidential information.

Specifically, the lawsuit alleges the pair downloaded customer files to their personal computers, deleted software systems from company servers used in the manufacturing process, and defamed Atipa by spreading rumors in the industry that it was closed or soon would close.

The lawsuit seeks at least $75,000 in damages.

Stouder and McGaugh have not yet answered the lawsuit, but in an interview, Stouder said the allegations were false.

“Honestly, this is a malicious attack because someone over there is upset that we left,” Stouder said. “When all the facts come out, it will show there’s nothing to this.”

Attempts to reach McGaugh were unsuccessful.

Stouder said he also was in a dispute with Atipa over $280,000 in unpaid sales commissions he said should have been paid before he left the company in February.

“I think that has something to do with why they filed this lawsuit,” Stouder said.

Chang maintains that all commissions owed Stouder have been paid.

He now is president of Eudora’s Team HPC. The company is in the same business as Atipa — the production of high-speed supercomputers used primarily by universities and government agencies.

Stouder and McGaugh formed the new company in partnership with Jefferson City, Mo.-based Computers Plus in late February. Team HPC has offices in Eudora’s Intech Business Park and employs 15 people, many of them former Atipa employees.

Stouder said business was going well and he was looking for space in Douglas County to build a manufacturing plant in the next 12 months. Manufacturing work for the company now is done in Jefferson City, while the technical work is done in Eudora.

“We would like to have this company grow to 150 to 200 people in this area,” Stouder said. “We think it has that type of potential.”

Stouder said he and McGaugh did not have a master plan to leave the company and start a new firm, but decided on that course after much of Atipa’s technical staff left the company.

Microtech has about 50 employees and sales of more than $30 million a year, Chang said. She said the former employees had been replaced and business remained strong.

“It took the whole company working together, but we did it,” Chang said. “We had a lot of good customers who understood the situation we were put in.”