NEW YORK—An employer was sentenced to jail time and probation for underpaying his workers, the second time Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman secured a sentence for the crime in less than seven days.
Bronx employer Alex Moreno didn’t pay his employees minimum wage at a car wash and gas station he owned and operated from 2007 through early 2009 in the Bronx. A sentence from the Bronx Supreme Court mandated Moreno spend weekends for four months in jail, with three years of probation.
“When an employer blatantly violates the state’s labor law, my office will take forceful action to protect New York’s workers, including criminal charges where appropriate,” Schneiderman said in a release.
Moreno paid 8 car wash workers $4 an hour each, with no overtime for 6-day workweeks, and his employees were working 12 hours per day. The minimum wage at that time was $7.15 an hour. Moreno will have to pay $150,000 in restitution to the workers, $52,493.34 to the New York State Unemployment Insurance Fund and $30,000 to the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board.
On July 13, Schneiderman announced a government construction project manager underpaid workers—paying them between $18 and $25 per hour, instead of the legally required prevailing wages between $51.54 and $70.54—for work in 2009 on LaGuardia Airport. The manager William Mazzella was sentenced to four months in jail, and will have to pay $800,000 in restitution.
Two co-owners of the construction company managed by Mazzella were also sentenced on related charges to five years probation and barred from working on public construction projects in the state for five years.
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