It's absolutely crazy. We used a payroll company that went under. Every week they would bill us for our gross wages plus employer's portion of income tax, FICA, Medicare, fees, etc. All bills were paid. Payroll company went out of business (heard the boss literally took off to Mexico.. with payrolls from many, many companies without writing checks to the employees)--we were lucky enough to have switched companies a couple of weeks before. Then one day an IRS agent showed up at our door asking why we hadn't paid our payroll taxes in like two years. Again, lucky for us, we were able to prove that we had paid the taxes to the payroll company so all of us and our employees were in the clear.
I've seen local guys do the same thing--go "bankrupt" with one company, only to open another company with the same equipment, employees, hell I've even seen them use the same location. I hear story after story of vendors that won't deal with company XXX anymore, so they're off to the next vendor. Absolutely crazy.