The owner of Grimaldi’s Pizzeria and the manager of its Manhattan branch were arrested on Thursday and charged with stealing more than $20,000 in wages from at least seven employees.
Over the course of at least four years, the owner, Anthony Piscina, 63, and the manager, Frank Santora, 71, lied to and exploited pizza makers, salad preppers, busboys and dishwashers, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said at a news conference.
The seven workers are each owed between $500 and $8,000, according to court documents.
“What may appear to some as a relatively low dollar amount can have life-changing consequences when someone is making minimum wage,” Mr. Bragg said.
Both men pleaded not guilty to one felony charge of scheme to defraud and seven misdemeanor counts of wage theft. Following their arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court Thursday afternoon, they were released without bail.
Gerard Marrone, a lawyer representing both Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora, said that the men were “blindsided” by the charges and weren’t fully aware of the accusations against them until several hours after their arrest.
“It could be a misunderstanding between my clients and their employees. My clients run multiple locations of Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, and they probably don’t even know,” Mr. Marrone said. “They have a payroll company that does the work for them, so they were totally unaware of any of this.”
Defrauded employees, who nearly all spoke Spanish as their primary language, sent numerous text messages to Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora and pleaded to be paid, according to court documents.
“Please, I have an emergency, my grandmother died. I need my money, please,” one text said, according to court documents.
“I sure need money to pay my rent please,” another message said.
But between August 2017 and August 2023, Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora gave workers paychecks that later bounced, offered them less than minimum wage and in some cases failed to pay them entirely, Mr. Bragg said. In some cases, the men persuaded employees to continue working by sending them partial payments on the app Zelle and scheduled “appointments” with workers to settle the owed wages but then never showed up, according to prosecutors.
One busboy was promised that he would be paid at a rate of $10 per hour — well below New York City’s minimum wage at the time of $15 per hour — but was never paid and was still owed approximately $8,000, prosecutors said.
After a former employee said that he had planned to hire a lawyer, Mr. Piscina boasted, “I’ve got three complaints on me. The state is not gonna do a thing,” according to court documents. Prosecutors said that Mr. Piscina had told the same employee, who is Mexican, that he was not allowed to wear a hat with the U.S. flag.
Grimaldi’s, which serves coal-fired pizza, first opened in the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn. The family business now has more than 40 locations across the country, according to the restaurant’s website.
Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora appeared bewildered at their arraignment Thursday afternoon.
“Oh my God, this is bizarre,” Mr. Piscina said as he walked out of the courtroom.
Their lawyer, Mr. Marrone, said that Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora were “good guys” who would be willing to pay workers any wages they are owed.
During the news conference on Thursday, Mr. Bragg said that many instances of wage theft go unreported.
“There’s a power asymmetry in these cases. There’s an understandable reluctance among many people to come forward,” he said. “It’s devastatingly unfair to workers and others in the fair open market who are playing by the rules.”
Wage theft is a widespread problem, but low-wage workers who are undocumented or who don’t speak English as their primary language are especially vulnerable, said Tito Sinha, a lawyer who leads the workers’ rights team at the nonprofit organization TakeRoot Justice.
“They are more likely to take work that falls below minimum wage, or they might not know what the laws are,” Mr. Sinha said.
