NEW YORK CITY — The pizza pie proprietors behind famed Grimaldi’s Pizzeria burned workers out of more than $20,000 of their hard-earned dough, Manhattan prosecutors said.
Owner Anthony Piscina, 63, and manager Frank Santora, 71, were indicted Thursday on wage theft charges.
The pair for years schemed to defraud seven pizza makers, salad preppers and dishwashers at the pizzeria’s Flatiron location out of pay, said Alvin Bragg, district attorney for Manhattan.
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Bragg said those workers left a trail of text messages to their bosses pleading for cash.
“Please, I have an emergency, my grandmother died. I need my money, please,” Bragg read from one text.
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“I sure need money to pay my rent,” he read from another.
“Can you pay me today please,” another text, visible on a placard by Bragg during a news conference, read.
A Patch reporter called Grimaldi’s for Piscina or Santora and was told they had no comment.
The wage theft case began after workers called Bragg’s office to complain about unpaid wages, authorities said.
Investigators found that between August 2017 and August 2023 that Piscina and Santora cheated workers out of pay by giving out paychecks that bounced, convincing staff to continue working through partial payments on financial apps, failing to show up for “appointments” to settle unpaid wages and offering less than the state’s minimum wage, Bragg said.
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“And, perhaps most tragically, time and time again (failing) to pay their workers any wages altogether,” he said.
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