Contractor Trio Stole $1.7M In Wages On Schools, NYCHA Projects: DA

NEW YORK CITY — Three electrical contractors stiffed workers on city school and NYCHA projects out of $1.7 million in pay, prosecutors said.

An indictment unveiled Wednesday by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg details a sweeping wage theft scheme by SAMCO Electrical Corporation's top bosses.

One SAMCO project foreman — Zdravko Maglic, of Hawthorne — even paid a city inspector to look the other way at the company wrongly using non-union workers, whose pay was far less than the prevailing wage and enabled the bosses to pocket wages.

"I can give you monthly payment, $1,000," Maglic told the inspector at one point, prosecutors said.

Maglic was arraigned Wednesday along with SAMCO's principals Silvano Travalja and Giovanne "Joanne" Travalja, both of College Point, on a slew of criminal charges from conspiracy to grand larceny to committing a scheme to defraud.

The trio from 2017 to 2021 submitted certified payroll reports to the School Construction Authority and NYCHA that claimed they paid the proper prevailing wage to workers, which stood at roughly $110 to $116 an hour, prosecutors said.

But investigators found the SAMCO bosses falsified the reported and instead used non-union worker from two shell companies — Powertech Electrical Contractors and Cro-El Systems Corp. — who they paid $25 to $50 an hour, prosecutors said.

"As a result, the defendants stole more than $1.7 million in contract payments intended for workers," a Manhattan District Attorney's office release states.

SAMCO's bosses gave workers identification cards with their photos but with the false names of union employees, among other steps to conceal the theft, authorities said.

The schools inspector accepted Maglic's bribes as part of the investigation, prosecutors said.