Towering scam

$10M scheme stiffed hardhats: DA

WAGE THEFT and insurance fraud charges were lodged Wednesday against a Queens construction firm and a payroll processing company for a scheme that netted a crew of crooked employers nearly $10 million, authorities said.

Instead of paying construction workers what they earned on projects including the Marriott hotels on Pearl St. and the Steinway Tower on W. 57th St., owners of Parkside Construction conspired with the payroll company to stiff at least 520 workers out of more than $1.7 million in wages and benefits between 2014 and 2017, said Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.

The hardhat bosses also failed to pay nearly $8 million in state workers’ compensation insurance premiums.

To keep track of employees’ earnings, Parkside, a Queens-based firm, used computerized face-recognition machines to record employees’ hours.

But printouts from the onsite timekeeping machines were later altered and updated with fewer hours than those actually worked, Vance said.

The falsified time sheets were then submitted for processing to Affinity Human Resources, the payroll processing company, which paid some workers’ wages with “expense reimbursement” checks to hide the fact that these payments were compensation.

The scheme allowed the companies to avoid withholding taxes and making unemployment insurance contributions.

“Amid Manhattan’s luxury building boom, sometimes it’s all too easy to overlook the human beings behind the scaffolding,” Vance said.

Company employees sued Parkside in 2015 over the same issue.

During that same time, Parkside hid more than $42 million in payroll from the New York State Insurance Fund to maintain the workers’ compensation coverage at fraudulently low premiums.

Charges against the executives named in the scheme include insurance fraud and grand larceny.

The DA’s office is also initiating a civil forfeiture action to recoup the stolen money, authorities said.