Parkside Construction

Description

According to the indictment, between 2014 and 2017, Parkside Construction, its owners, and its constituent companies, which included Parkside Construction Builders Corp., Parkside Construction Contractors Inc., and GS&F Enterprises LLC, stole more than $1.7 million from at least 520 workers through a wage theft scheme with the assistance of Affinity Human Resources, LLC, a professional employer organization, and its owner. Affinity provided Parkside Construction with human resources services such as payroll, employee benefits, and workers’ compensation management. During this period, Parkside Construction had contracts with multiple builders and developers to perform concrete installation and masonry work on several high-rise buildings in Manhattan. Parkside Construction used computerized face-recognition machines at worksites to record workers’ hours. However, as part of the wage theft scheme, printouts from the on-site time-keeping machines were later altered and updated with lower weekly hours than those actually worked. The falsified timesheets were then submitted to Affinity for processing. Parkside Construction and its principles directed Michael Dimaggio, an outside consultant, and Jerry Hamling, the owner of Affinity, to pay some workers’ wages with ‘expense reimbursement’ checks to hide the fact that the payments were compensation, thereby avoiding making withholding taxes and unemployment insurance contributions. The indictment also alleges that from March 2014 and October 2017, Parkside Construction, its owners, and senior employees also hid more than $40 million in payroll from the NY State Insurance Fund (NYSIF) to maintain workers’ compensation coverage at fraudulenty low premiums. Affinity and Hamling helped conceal payroll information by falsely informing NYSIF that operations had been restructured, all workers’ employment had been terminated, and all direct labor involving construction had been subcontracted out to other vendors. These claims were reiterated by Parkside Construction’s owner, Francesco Pugliese, and accountant Michael Dimaggio, who falsely certified that partial records pertaining the company’s payroll were complete and accurate. Based on numerous false statements and submissions, the defendants failed to report more than $42 million in payroll, thereby evading more than $7.8 million in insurance premiums.

Prosecutors

Assistant District Attorney Meredith McGowan