Nassau Labor Fraud Crackdown Returns Nearly $650K In Stolen Wages To Nassau Workers: NCDA

NASSAU COUNTY, NY — Nassau County workers have received nearly $650,000 in stolen wages through multiple labor prosecutions this year, the Nassau County District Attorney's Office announced.

Four men and their companies were charged after they were accused of submitting fraudulent workers' compensation insurance certificates and other documents to Nassau County Consumer Affairs to obtain home improvement contractor licenses, NCDA Anne Donnelly said.

The cases are part of DA Donnelly's effort to target labor crimes through the Major Financial Frauds Bureau, which investigates and prosecutes labor law violations with state and local agency partners, the DA's office said.

The Major Financial Frauds Bureau handles "long-term investigations and complex financial schemes," involving financial exploitation of senior citizens, identity theft, real estate and deed fraud, embezzlement, investment scams and credit card fraud, among other crimes, the DA's office said.

"Since becoming District Attorney, I have put more resources toward protecting workers and cracking down on anyone trying to cheat the system," DA Donnelly said. "Labor crimes strip hard-working employees of basic protections and push innocent families to the brink of financial ruin."

The bureau's wage-theft prosecutions have resulted in nearly $650,000 being returned to 138 Nassau County workers this year, the DA's office said.

Donnelly said the prosecutors were able to bring the "stolen wages back where they belong – in the hands of workers who earned them."

On Sept. 2, four men and their companies — Always First Restoration LLC in Queens, Kingspoint Builders LLC in Hempstead, JRM Development LLC in Lawrence and Braga Industries Inc. in Carle Place — were charged after they were accused of submitting fraudulent workers' compensation documents, the DA's office said.

Prosecutors said the documents contained altered policy expiration dates showing active insurance coverage, insurance policy numbers and addresses that belonged to other companies, or false or nonexistent coverage information.

All four applications for residential construction licenses were denied by the NCCA, the DA's office said.

In a separate wage-theft case, the owner of Westbury Fish was ordered to pay $435,000 in unpaid wages to 38 employees after an investigation by the NCDA's office and the U.S. Department of Labor, the DA's office said.

The DA's office also obtained $60,000 in repayment on June 4 after a different company did not pay its construction workers time-and-a-half for overtime work, prosecutors said.

A contractor also paid $35,000 to 25 employees on June 16 after the DA's office found the company had failed to pay workers on multiple projects, prosecutors said.

The Major Financial Frauds Bureau also secured multiple guilty pleas in labor-related cases, the DA's office said.

The co-owners of Timeless Body II LLC, a medspa in Garden City, were each sentenced to $5,000 fines, the DA's office said.

Prosecutors said the owner of BJA Renovations Corp. in North Babylon was ordered to pay $81,592 in prevailing wages to more than 40 employees for work at the Merrick and Oceanside Union Free School Districts between 2019 and 2021.

The DA's office said all charges are merely accusations, and the defendants are presumed innocent until and unless found guilty.