Nassau district attorney recovers $60,000 in underpaid wages

A Freeport construction company has been fined — and banned from any public works contracts in New York State for five years — after pleading guilty to falsifying paperwork on a job for the Wantagh Union Free School District, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly announced this week.

Additionally, the district attorney's office said, an investigation into two other companies has led to the recovery of about $60,000 in underpaid wages — one related to work done at Oceanside High School, another related to restoration work for the Jericho Water District.

The Freeport company, GTX Construction Associates Corp., pleaded guilty to first-degree offering a false instrument for filing Wednesday before Judge Christopher Quinn in Nassau County Court, and was sentenced to a fine of $1,000 and granted a conditional discharge. Under state law, the felony conviction automatically prohibits GTX and principal owner, Giovanni Napolitano, from performing any state contracts for five years, the district attorney's office said.

A separate investigation recovered $12,293.40 in underpaid wages from JLN Contracting Inc., of Central Islip, for carpentry work at Oceanside High School, and $49,175.01 from Gulf States Protective Coatings Inc., of La Porte, Texas, for what the district attorney's office described as "highly specialized work" related to restoration of a water tank and treatment facilities in Jericho.

On that job, the district attorney's office said, District Council 9 Painters and the Allied Trades Union notified officials that the nonunion Texas company underpaid employees by about $20 an hour. Paperwork revealed that five workers were underpaid by almost $10,000 each — leading to the recovery of nearly $50,000. The district attorney's office said the workers received payments in January.

On the Oceanside carpentry work, which took place over a six-week period in 2022, the employee on the project was paid $27 an hour in cash instead of the $85.54 an hour rate for wages and benefits, as prescribed by law, the district attorney's office said.

The recovered underpayments were paid to the worker last week, officials said.

In a statement this week, Donnelly said the situation with the Wantagh school district and GTX came to light when the district determined "substandard work" had been performed on a job at Mandalay Elementary School and terminated the contract. The subsequent investigation by the district attorney's office found that even though GTX was to have secured a bond to guarantee payment, it had, in fact, "forged and falsified" a surety bond — submitting paperwork as proof from a company that investigators found had left the bonding industry in 2021. 

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”