They man caved
Post XXX cover boys in quick suit $ettle
Well that was fast. A New Jersey boss accused of running his office like an X-rated movie settled a lawsuit with female former employees mere hours after the The Post splashed their salacious claims across the front page Friday — alongside photos of his ball-gagged manager getting a lap dance from a stripper in the workplace.
The owner of American Funding Group, Corporate Bailout and related companies in Tinton Falls quickly lawyered up and came to an agreement with the exworkers who — among many, many other things — accused him of regularly summoning one female worker by saying, “Get your t-ts in here,” then rubbing his face in her breasts.
He called the allegations a “misunderstanding.”
“We are pleased that this misunderstanding with some of our former employees has been amicably resolved and the allegations withdrawn,” owner Mark Mancino told The Post on Friday afternoon.
Lawyers for both parties refused to say how much was paid to settle the suit.
The three former staffers — Nicole Orlando, Evelyn Grondski and Donna Simone — had alleged the office was “so sexually aggressive, morally repulsive, and unlawfully hostile that it is rivaled only by the businesses portrayed in the films ‘Boiler Room’ and ‘The Wolf of Wall Street,’ ” and said they had been fired for refusing to play along with the sexcapades.
The filing included video and photos of an office birthday party for manager Michael Hamill featuring a leather-clad stripper and a blowup sex doll — a toy that also made an appearance during job interviews at the company, the plaintiffs claimed.
The suit alleged that one staffer, Maria Formoso, quit after she had had enough of Mancino’s sexual harassment — despite being offered a raise and a bonus because, Hamill allegedly said, the boss “wants to put his d--k in her.”
Formoso on Friday told The Post she had never experienced or seen any harassment in the job — but just considered watching a stripper straddling her boss a regular day at the office.
“It was a birthday party. It was all in good fun. I thought it was funny,” she said.
Friday’s settlement doesn’t mean Mancino’s problems are over.
Angry customers are also looking to sue over their business practices, a source told The Post.
“I don’t think this is over for them,” the source said. “There are potentially more lawsuits over their business practices.”
Mancino and his attorney both declined to comment on allegations over “illicit” business practices also mentioned in the lawsuit — including that customers are “deliberately kept in the dark” about the relationship between his lending business and debt-consolidation business. Additional reporting by Ruth Brown kwhitehouse@nypost.com