Geraldo DeAlmeida, owner of R&L Concrete, Inc, plead guilty and will pay back $99,671 he illegally withheld from his employees on a project for Longwood Central School District.
Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney announced that Geraldo DeAlmeida, 57, of South River, New Jersey, and his corporation, R&L Concrete, Inc., pleaded guilty to Willful Failure to Pay the Prevailing Wage and Supplement, and a related charge, for failing to pay the proper prevailing wage rate and supplemental benefits to its employees, resulting in approximately $99,671 in underpayments.
“This conviction reaffirms my commitment to protecting workers’ rights by combatting wage theft,” said District Attorney Tierney. “It speaks to our dedication to the fight against anyone who would fraudulently and illegally fail to pay employees for their honest labor in Suffolk County.”
According to court documents and the defendant’s admissions during his guilty plea allocution, between November 25, 2019, and April 10, 2020, DeAlmeida's company R&L Concrete, Inc. was a subcontractor at a public works project in the construction of the administrative building at Longwood Central School District.
The public works contract required DeAlmeida, through R&L Concrete, Inc., to properly list and classify his employees on certified payrolls and to pay them the statutory prevailing wage rate and supplemental benefits. Instead, DeAlmeida willfully misclassified his employees on the certified payrolls to classifications that paid a lower wage rate.
In addition to failing to pay the required prevailing wage rate and benefits, multiple employees who were entitled to a wage rate that varied between $68 and $198 per hour were only paid between $22 to $25 per hour. The investigation also found that DeAlmeida completely omitted one employee working at the project from the certified payrolls, in violation of the New York State Labor Laws.
R&L Concrete Inc. pleaded guilty to one count of Willful Failure to Pay the Prevailing Wage and Supplement, a Class E felony. DeAlmeida also pleaded guilty to Willful Failure to Pay the Prevailing Wage and Supplement, a Class A misdemeanor. As DeAlmeida and the corporation will pay $99,671 back to five employees. Based on the felony conviction, R&L Concrete, Inc. is banned by the New York State Department of Labor from working on any additional public works projects in New York State for five years.
DeAlmeida and the corporation were both represented by Shulamis Peltz, Esq. DeAlmeida and R&L Concrete, Inc. This case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Adriana Noyola of the Financial Crimes Bureau, and the investigation was conducted by Detective Investigators of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office and the New York State Department of Labor.