AG: Supermarket Execs Super Illegal
Posted on Thursday, 9 of October , 2008 at 6:20 pm
NEW YORK—The president and vice president of 229 Knickerbocker Corp, the parent company of the Bushwick Associated Supermarket, located at 220 Knickerbocker Avenue in Brooklyn, have been charged with allegedly creating false business records, filing false documents with the state, defrauding employees and paying illegal wages.
Arrested were Bienvenido Nunez, president; and Martin Duran, vice president. They have been charged in Kings County Criminal Court with falsifying business records in the first degree and offering a false instrument for filing in the first degree, both class E felonies punishable by up to four years in prison. The men were also charged with failure to pay wages, a class A misdemeanor.
The Attorney General’s office also announced a lawsuit to recover over $600,000 in unpaid wages for the supermarket’s 30 employees.
The case’s testimony shows that baggers and packers at Bushwick Associated Supermarket were paid nothing, receiving only tips as compensation, which amounted to approximately $30 a day. The delivery workers worked an average of 70 hours a week but made less than minimum wage and no overtime, as required by state labor laws. Making just over $4 an hour, including tips, they netted barely $300 for a six-day, 70-hour work week. Cashiers and stock people were also denied overtime pay despite working extra hours nearly every day they were employed at the Brooklyn market.
The case against Nunez and Duran covers a two-year period between 2004 and 2006 and alleges that the men not only failed to provide adequate compensation for their workers, but filed false documents with the state to cover up their wrongdoings.
The AG’s office said that in violation of New York State Labor Law, Nunez and Duran did not pay their workers overtime, failed to provide minimum wage to many and, in some cases, provided no compensation at all. The executives, both Spanish speakers, also made no efforts to ensure that their primarily Spanish-speaking employees understood what they were being paid for and what deductions were being taken.
On top of cheating their workers, the case also alleges that Nunez and Duran then falsified their business records to the state. They created a separate set of payroll records for the majority of their employees, showing that each employee worked no more than 40 hours a week, when in reality every worker worked overtime for most weeks employed at the store.
The pair is also being charged with filing false documents with the State’s Unemployment Insurance Fund, claiming fewer workers than were actually employed at the Associated Supermarket. Based on these false documents, the AG’s office says Nunez and Duran paid less into the Unemployment Insurance Fund than required to by law and failed to adequately cover all of their employees.
The Unemployment Insurance Fund is set up to give workers an income while they are out of work and looking for a new job. If an employer is cheating the system, it makes it nearly impossible for employees to attain benefits for themselves and their families, Cuomo said. 10-09-08
Category: Business, Consumers, Courts, New York State
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Meneame -
- Digg
COPYRIGHT 2007 - NORTH COUNTRY GAZETTE All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the express written permission of the publisher.
