The owner of Grimaldi’s Pizzeria and the manager of the restaurant’s Manhattan location pleaded guilty to stealing more than $32,000 in wages from 18 employees by bouncing checks and sometimes by not paying workers at all, prosecutors announced on Wednesday.
The owner, Anthony Piscina, 63, and the manager, Frank Santora, 71, each pleaded guilty to one count of attempted scheme to defraud in the first degree. They submitted a cashier’s check to the Manhattan district attorney’s office on Wednesday to pay full restitution as their sentence.
The plea means that “18 hard-working New Yorkers will be made whole,” Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, said in a statement.
Gerard Marrone, a lawyer representing both Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora, said his clients had entered guilty pleas to put the case behind them and that they were merely “guilty of very bad record-keeping.”
“They didn’t have the proper documentation and the records and the bookkeeping, really, to prove that they paid these workers, and that was really the reality of it,” Mr. Marrone said.
The guilty pleas come two months after Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora were charged with wage theft. At the time, they were accused of stealing more than $20,000 in wages from at least seven employees.
After the charges were announced, “more workers came forward, making clear the importance of both outreach and reporting,” Mr. Bragg said in his statement.
The wage theft occurred between August 2017 and August 2023, prosecutors said, and affected pizza makers, salad preppers, busboys and dishwashers.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora gave employees paychecks that bounced, sent only partial payments through financial apps and failed to show up for appointments to pay what they owed.
One busboy who is owed around $8,000 was promised $10 an hour — far less than the $15 New York City minimum wage at the time — but was never paid, prosecutors said.
In another instance, according to prosecutors, Mr. Santora gave a six-year employee a letter that said “I owe you $4,559,” but did not pay that employee either.
When a former employee told Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora that he planned to hire a lawyer to get his lost wages, they responded that they were facing several complaints already and that “the state is not gonna do a thing,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Piscina also told that employee, who is Mexican, to take off a hat with an American flag on it. “You can’t wear that,” he said, referring to the employee’s nationality, according to prosecutors.
Grimaldi’s, which first opened in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, has locations in 12 states, according to the restaurant’s website.
Mr. Bragg encouraged people who believe their wages have been stolen to call his office’s Worker Protection Unit, which received the complaints about Grimaldi’s that initiated this case. The unit, created in February 2023, investigates wage theft, with a focus on areas with high rates of worker exploitation, such as fast food and restaurants, according to the district attorney’s office.
