Cheap contractors arrested

From the Daily News:

A city contractor cheated workers out of nearly $600,000 on a taxpayer-funded affordable-housing project for seniors in Brooklyn, authorities said Wednesday.

Masonry Services Inc. and its owners, James Herrera and Jaime Herrera, have agreed to pay $600,000 in back wages and costs after a probe by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Between June 2009 and July 2010, the Brooklyn firm paid masonry workers on the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development project in Brownsville as little as $8 an hour even though it was legally required to pay more than $53 an hour, Schneiderman’s office said.

The case is the latest in a series brought by Schneiderman against HPD contractors for failing to pay prevailing wages, he said.

In March, the owner and two employees of Applied Construction Inc. were arrested on underpayment charges in the Bronx.