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Contractors Arrested on Charges In $430,000 Prevailing Wage Case
NEW YORK—A
pair of New York City ironwork contractors have been arrested on
charges that they stole more than $430,000 owed to workers by failing to pay
the
prevailing wage on a public project, state Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo
(D)
announced Oct. 1.Defendants Geewhan Mangal, president of G-1 Ironworks, and Joseph Casucci,
chief operations officer of FJM-Ferro, were charged with grand larceny for
prevailing wage
violations on a contract to provide ironwork for a Camp
Smith building project in
Cortlandt Manor, N.Y.
Prosecutors charged that, in a scheme dating back to May 2008, Mangal allegedly instructed workers to cash their company paychecks, which were valued at a legal rate and return all of the money to him. He would then pay the workers in cash at a rate far below the value of the paycheck, they said. Mangal and Casucci subsequently submitted certified weekly payroll reports, signed by Casucci, falsely stating that all workers were paid a legal rate, prosecutors said. Mangal and Casucci are each charged with 23 counts of first-degree falsifying business records, 23 counts of offering a false instrument for filing, and one count of second-degree grand larceny. If convicted, they could face up to 15 years in prison for the larceny charges and up to four years in jail for each of the lesser counts, prosecutors said. FJM-Ferro is located in the city borough of Brooklyn, and G1 Ironworks Inc. in the Jamaica section of the borough of Queens. Electrical Contractor Charged In another case announced at the same time, an electrical contractor was charged with posing as a licensed electrician to gain a New York City schools subcontract and then failing to pay some of his workers on the project any wages at all. Defendant Maurizio Randazzo of Bellmore, N.Y., the principal of ANR Electrical Contracting Inc. and Grand Electric Inc., fraudulently claimed he was a licensed electrician to obtain the subcontract in 11 city schools under a Project Connect general contract with IBM Corp., according to prosecutors. The companies are located in the Ridgewood section of Queens. Prosecutors charged that Randazzo submitted fake payroll reports indicating that he paid workers legal wages, although he never paid some workers at all and paid others far below what the law requires. The contractor kept the difference between the amount paid to his companies for wages and what the workers were actually paid, prosecutors alleged. The scheme yielded more than $26,000 in funds paid by the city Education Department, they said. Randazzo and his corporations were each charged with one count of third-degree grand larceny and 40 counts of falsifying business records. He faces up to seven years in jail on the grand larceny count, prosecutors said. Representatives of the defendants could not be reached for comment.
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