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The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Inspector General Robert E. Van Etten Thursday announced the arraignment of a Long Island construction contractor on two felony and two misdemeanor charges stemming from the underpayment of wages to 13 laborers in excess of $25,000 on a public construction project.

Gerard Ippolito, president of Liberty Tree Service, Inc., and his corporation face numerous charges, including Offering a False Instrument for Filing in the First Degree the a Class E felony – and Failing to Pay Wages, a misdemeanor. The defendants entered not guilty pleas today in Queens County Criminal Court.

According to court papers, between October 18, 2004 and December 31, 2005, employees of Liberty Tree Services, Inc. worked on a Port Authority project involving landscaping for the John F. Kennedy International Airport Van Wyck Corridor Beautification Program, which followed the path of the AirTrain.  The contract was subject to the state’s prevailing wage law, which dictates the hourly rates that must be paid to employees on public work projects.

The weekly certified payroll records submitted by the defendants in the case showed the workers being paid the legal hourly prevailing wage rates of $51.11 per hour.  However, the contractors’ employees were actually paid hourly wages much less then the prescribed hourly rate.  The defendants are charged with filing false certified payroll records in an effort to conceal underpayments of $27,484.72 to 13 employees.

The case was investigated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Inspector General’s Office and then referred to the New York State Attorney General’s Office for prosecution.

Tags: airtrain, beautification program, construction contractor, construction project, guilty pleas, hourly wages, inspector general, island construction, island contractor, kennedy international airport, Landscaping, liberty tree, misdemeanor charges, new york state attorney general, payroll records, port authority of new york and new jersey, prevailing wage rates, public construction, queens county criminal court, Services, state attorney general, van etten, van wyck
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At least eight workers at Seattle nightspots who were arrested in a controversial sting operation intend to take their cases to trial because, their attorneys say, the plea deals they were offered amount to no deal at all.

The workers are among 27 bartenders, bouncers and other bar employees criminally charged in Operation Sobering Thought, a sting begun in August that targeted 15 nightclubs in Pioneer Square, Belltown and the University District.

All the charges are gross misdemeanors; most concern serving minors or allowing minors into a tavern. Two bouncers were charged with allowing a firearm inside a tavern.

For months, defense attorneys in the sting cases have complained that City Attorney Tom Carr’s office has been inflexible and unreasonable in plea negotiations.

Some of the bouncers who are first-time offenders were offered initial plea deals of 20 days in jail and a year’s probation, while the two charged with letting a patron bring a gun into a tavern were offered a year in jail, defense attorneys say.

“I have clients charged with felonies who have gotten better offers than these defendants,” said Jessica Riley, who is defending a bouncer from Cowgirls, a Pioneer Square bar. “In this case they didn’t seem to be open to any kind of negotiation.”

Another defendant’s attorney, David Gehrke, said in his three decades practicing law, he has never seen prosecutors recommend significant jail time for first-time offenders, including people charged with driving under the influence and domestic violence.

The plea offers are “way out of whack compared to the charge,” Gehrke said. Letting a minor into a tavern “is a human mistake. You don’t lock up people for 30 days for that,” he said.

“Get better control”

Carr said the plea offers are based strictly on sentencing guidelines and a defendant’s history. He said he has been trying to rein in staff attorneys from using their discretion and offering deals that could vary unfairly from case to case.

“I’ve been trying to get better control over what we do,” Carr said. “I worry about being fair to the 20,000 people we charge here” annually.

Carr said his office essentially makes three plea offers in every case it prosecutes, depending on the stage at which the defendant enters a guilty plea: a lenient offer at first appearance, a standard offer during the pretrial phase and a more severe sentence beyond that stage.

But defense attorneys representing some of those arrested in the August sting say the first plea deals proffered weren’t at all lenient.

The offers, apparently, aren’t negotiable.

“To some extent, people believe there’s ongoing negotiation,” Carr said. “You’re not supposed to sit there and haggle over days in jail.”

3 cases dismissed

Of the 27 individuals charged in the sting operation, three saw their cases dismissed entirely, including one of the bouncers charged with letting a firearm into a tavern.

Prosecutors gave deals to seven others, mostly bartenders, whose cases will be dismissed without guilty pleas as long as they do some community service and commit no further violations.

Rarely, if ever, has the city pursued criminal prosecution of bar workers, who are typically fined by the Liquor Control Board if they violate liquor laws.

Last year’s sting operation drew immediate criticism from the night-life industry and questions from City Council members about its timing and use of scarce police resources.

In 2006, the city didn’t file charges against anyone for selling liquor to a minor or allowing a minor into a tavern, according to Seattle Municipal Court.

The city did file charges in 2006 against a patron who police say brought a gun into a Lake City Way bar and then brandished it outside. The young man faced a maximum sentence of a year in jail and pleaded not guilty at his first appearance.

Weeks later at his first pretrial hearing, a plea deal was struck: In exchange for pleading guilty to a lesser charge, forfeiting his gun and staying away from the bar, the man got 29 days of electronic home monitoring, court records show.

Tags: council members, domestic violence, guilty pleas, prosecutors, target, three decades
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Kurt Claywell, who has proven to be one of the most enduring figures in the scandal that toppled former Gov. John J. Rowland, was sentenced to another five years in prison for tax evasion Wednesday after his third conviction for tax evasion or fraud since 2000.

Claywell, 55, who admitted supplying Rowland with expensive champagne and illegal Cuban cigars, was convicted last July of conspiracy to commit bankruptcy fraud for attempting to conceal during a 2005 bankruptcy filing more than $200,000 in assets, including property, rare books and a wine collection he told authorities he gave away.U.S. District Judge Alvin W. Thompson ordered the sentence to begin after Claywell finishes a 5%26#189;-year term he began serving in October 2005 for unrelated federal tax and mail fraud convictions.

“Being sentenced to a lengthy prison term did not deter him from committing another crime,” Thompson said. Thompson also ordered Claywell to pay $86,000 in restitution, which includes the value of the wine. Claywell also faces a year in state prison for a 2007 conviction of fourth-degree sexual assault and attempting to bribe the victim.

In seeking a shorter sentence, Claywell asked the judge to consider that he will be in his 60s before he is released from prison and can seek work to pay off his debts. “I hope that my criminal record aside, my age will not be too much of an obstacle when I get out,” he said. In asking for the five-year maximum sentence, prosecutor Ann Nevin noted that Claywell’s fraudulent bankruptcy filing came within weeks of his 2005 sentencing.

“The defendant has demonstrated that he is incorrigible,” she wrote in court papers. “The defendant’s guilty pleas to financial fraud charges have not resulted in rehabilitation, but rather have been followed by additional financial fraud crimes resulting in significant financial loss to others and in the waste of taxpayer dollars better spent on other pursuits.” Claywell, a Simsbury electrical contractor, was not charged in connection with the federal corruption investigation of the Rowland administration, but told investigators he gave Rowland expensive cigars and champagne in exchange for access to state contracts.

He was facing tax and fraud charges when he agreed to cooperate in the corruption probe that led to Rowland’s resignation and one-year federal prison sentence. Claywell’s attorneys had asked for a sentence of about three years in the bankruptcy case. They said Claywell’s latest scheme was bound to fail because his prior criminal record would lead to more scrutiny from creditors, which included the wife he was divorcing and his own divorce attorney. Thompson rejected that argument as a reason to reduce the sentence, saying most defendants who come before him can claim their criminal plots were doomed to fail.

Tags: amp, guilty pleas, mail fraud, minis, obstacle
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