Toms River Contractor Who Underpaid Workers Gets 3 Years In Jail

TRENTON, NJ – An Ocean County contractor from Toms River has been sentenced to three years in prison for repeatedly not paying his employees the prevailing wage and then falsifying his payroll records to cover it up, the state attorney general's office said Friday.

Some of those employees weren't paid at all, Attorney General Gurbir S. Grewal said. Many of them were believed to be undocumented immigrants, he said.

Albert Chwedczuk, 45, of Toms River, was sentenced to three years in state prison by Superior Court Judge Mark K. Chase in Camden County. He pleaded guilty on March 27 to second-degree false contract payment claims. Chwedczuk must pay a total of $155,166 in restitution to workers, Grewal's office said.

Investigators found Chwedczuk knowingly failed to pay his employees approximately $155,166 in wages on a prevailing wage public contract in 2015 and 2016 — contracts he was supposed to be barred from receiving as of 2014 because he had previously violated New Jersey's Prevailing Wage Act. Those violations happened under his businesses Ren Construction LLC and Real Construction LLC, authorities said.

So Chwedczuk created a new business, Bella Group LLC, and obtained a public subcontract worth $400,000 to provide masonry work for the Cooper Camden Student Housing project on South Broadway in Camden. Once he had the contract using Bella Group LLC, he paid most of his employees only a fraction of the prevailing wages they were entitled to be paid, and didn't pay others at all.

To cover up his violations of the Prevailing Wage Act, Chwedczuk submitted certified payrolls containing false information to the general contractor on a weekly basis. He also told several of his employees to lie to a state investigator about the wages.

Former Deputy Attorney General Christopher J. Keating took the guilty plea and Deputy Attorney General Valerie Butler, who is Deputy Bureau Chief, handled the sentencing for the Division of Criminal Justice Specialized Crimes Bureau. The case was referred to the Division of Criminal Justice by the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development (NJLWD), Division of Wage and Hour Compliance, which initially investigated the violations of the Prevailing Wage Act.

"I am committed to using all available tools, including New Jersey’s strong criminal laws, to protect our workers, protect our immigrants, and protect the integrity of our public contracts," Grewal said. "When contractors receive taxpayer dollars for a public project, they promise to pay prevailing wages to employees for all their hard work. But this employer cheated his workers and hoarded public funds for his own enrichment."

Detective Christine Sullivan and Deputy Attorneys General Christopher Keating and Jeffrey J. Barile investigated under the supervision of Deputy Chief of Detectives Rich King, Chief of Detectives Weldon Powell, Bureau Chief Andrew Johns, and Deputy Bureau Chief Valerie Butler.

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