Listen to this articleA Glen Cove firm and its president were sentenced Thursday in a prevailing wage theft scheme, officials said.
American Paving & Masonry Corp., and its president Angelo Stanco were sentenced on the wage theft charges for demanding employees kick-back checks that they were entitled to receive from New York State Department of Labor. The DOL had issued those checks because the company had not paid the prevailing wage on public work projects in Brookville and Sands Point, according to Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly.
Stanco, a Glen Head resident, was convicted of third-degree grand larceny and sentenced to a conditional discharge. The company was sentenced to a three-year conditional discharge and payment of restitution of more than $171,000 to 18 former employees. The defendants made full payment of the restitution amount on Thursday to the employees, with payments ranging from $1,853 to $21,000, the DA’s office said.
Because the convictions were related to public work projects in Nassau County, both Stanco and American Paving are prohibited from performing New York public work contracts until May 23, 2029.
“This defendant not only failed to pay his employees their fair and rightly owed prevailing wage, but further victimized and bullied workers by shaking them down for checks they received as compensation from the State and threatening their future employment if they did not hand the checks over,” Donnelly said in a written statement.
Stanco’s attorney, Vito Palmieri, in a statement to Newsday, said that his client “was misadvised, and he made mistakes. He admitted to those mistakes, and he took responsibility for them. He just wants to put this bad scenario behind him.”
The defendants had been charged last year, following new provisions in the law, which stated that any employer who does not pay the proper minimum wage, overtime rate or promised wage, can be charged with a crime.
On Thursday, the DA’s office said that Stanco and American had been required by the Commissioner of Labor to remit $102,000 to the DOL for the underpaid prevailing wages and interest.
The DOL issued 25 restitution checks for the underpayments and interest to 22 employees on Dec. 7, 2018, the DA’s office said. Stanco and American provided the employees’ address information to the DOL allowing the agency to mail the checks directly to the underpaid employees. However, between Dec. 13, 2018, and January 3, 2019, Stanco demanded several employees kick-back the DOL checks to Stanco and American as a condition of their future employment, the DA’s office said.
Many of the kicked-back checks were allegedly fraudulently endorsed by the defendant or double-endorsed with the defendant’s name and deposited into accounts controlled by the defendant, the DA’s office said. Seven employees were affected by the scheme, and the amount of the kickbacks totaled more than $42,000.
The additional restitution of more than $128,000 is attributable to wage theft by the defendants on public work jobs at Nassau locations between 2019 and 2022, the DA’s office said. Those locations include road work projects at the Glen Cove School District, and the Villages of Great Neck, Great Neck Plaza, Flower Hill, Roslyn, Roslyn Harbor, Freeport, Lawrence, Cedarhurst and Hewlett.
