North Star SHRM will be hosting a virtual education session titled:

I9 Forms: From "Oops, Fix It Later" to "That'll Be $2,861, Please"

Speaker Victoria Bizzotto, SHE-EO with Pink Slip Solutions

This is a virtual presentation via Zoom on Wednesday, September 9, 2026, from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. All North Star SHRM members are invited to attend. There is no cost to attend. 

For the meeting link, log into the North Star SHRM website and click "Virtual Meeting Log-in" under Meetings & Events on the left side.

Session Description:

Remember when a missing middle initial on a Form I-9 was just an “oops, fix it before the auditor leaves” moment? Yeah, ICE remembers too — and in March 2026 they quietly rewrote the rulebook, so a bunch of those cute little “technical” errors are now full-blown substantive violations, fineable from day one of an inspection with zero grace period. No warning, no Federal Register notice, just a website update and a whole lot of HR professionals finding out the hard way.

In this session, Victoria Bizzotto breaks down exactly what changed, why ICE conducted an estimated 12,000–15,000 audits in 2025 — a 10x jump from 2024 — and what it actually costs when your “minor” paperwork error gets reclassified mid-audit (spoiler: a 50-employee Michigan manufacturer got hit with $45K for stuff they didn’t even know was a problem). We’ll walk through real cases, real fine math, and the exact corrections you need to make before ICE ever knocks — because after they knock, it’s too late to fix anything.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Distinguish between substantive and technical/procedural I-9 errors under ICE’s March 2026 reclassification — and identify which of their own “routine” errors just became fineable.
2. Calculate potential exposure using ICE’s 2026 penalty framework ($288–$2,861 per form for paperwork violations, up to $28,619 for knowing-hire violations) and the five-factor adjustment matrix.
3. Identify the audit triggers most relevant to their industry — construction, staffing, hospitality, manufacturing, and retail are currently seeing disproportionate ICE attention.
4. Build a defensible internal I-9 audit process, including documentation and correction protocols, that demonstrates good faith before a Notice of Inspection ever arrives.

Speaker Bio:

Victoria Bizzotto

Victoria Bizzotto is the SHE-E-O of Pink Slip Solutions, an HR consulting firm that helps businesses tackle the people problems that keep leaders up at night—from compliance and employee relations to leadership, culture, and building the HR infrastructure companies need to grow.

With more than a decade of HR leadership experience supporting organizations and workforces ranging from small businesses to thousands of employees, Victoria has built her career navigating the complicated, uncomfortable, and occasionally “how did we even get here?” side of people and business.

Through Pink Slip Solutions, she brings big-company HR expertise to growing businesses without the big-company bureaucracy—helping leaders reduce risk, strengthen their teams, and turn HR drama into boardroom karma.

Victoria is also the co-host of Reignmakers Collective, where HR, money, entrepreneurship, and the realities of running a business collide. Alongside finance expert Stacy Hunt, she talks candidly about the people stuff, the money stuff, and all the chaos in between.

Her philosophy is simple: People First. Profits Burst. Because when businesses get the people side right, the business results follow.