Garden City Man Cheated Insurance Companies Out Of $235K: Nassau DA

MINEOLA, NY — A Garden City man has been charged with insurance fraud for allegedly underreporting payroll to insurance companies and cheating them out of $235,000 in premiums, prosecutors said.

Vassilios Handakas, also known as William Handakas and Bill Handakas, 60, was released on his own recognizance.

"When an employer makes misrepresentations about the number of employees at their company and their payroll figures, they unfairly impact honest employers who bear the burden of insurance fraud in the form of higher premiums and workers who may suffer an injury just to find they have no protection through worker’s compensation coverage," said Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly. "This defendant left his workers exposed and allegedly cheated insurance companies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Vector Structural Corporation and Handakos entered into a contract for a workers’ compensation policy with an insurance company for coverage between March 2019 and March 2020, according to Donnelly.

In the application, the company allegedly indicated that it employed two masons with an annual payroll of $50,000 a year. Records the company and Handakas filed with the state, however, indicated that Vector had 13 employees during that time frame and a payroll of $625,466. The underreporting of the employees and payroll resulted in an underpayment of insurance premiums of $197,623, the D.A.'s office said.

In March 2020, Handakas and Vector allegedly repeated the underreporting of workers and payroll on its policy application with another insurance provider. The company claimed it had a payroll of $20,000, when the actual payroll according to state records was $106,452. The alleged underreporting resulted in a loss to the insurance carrier of $38,892, Donnelly said.

Handakas is due back in court on April 10. If convicted of the top charge, he faces a potential maximum of 5 to 15 years in prison.