The state Labor Department's really on a roll with these bad boss busts! In recent weeks they've won big payouts in back wages from the owners of Amish Market and Ollie's Noodle Shop, and now they've brought the hammer down on a Bronx baker.
And instead of ending with a peaceful settlement like those other investigations, this one is going to trial. Yesterday 57-year-old Walter Galiano, a retired NYPD officer who may be connected to the Genovese crime family, was arraigned in State Supreme Court on 44 felony and 240 misdemeanor counts, including insurance fraud, minimum wage law violations, tax fraud and the illegal withholding of more than $350,000 in wages.
"Some of his workers received, we allege, $55 for an entire day’s work that could be between 10 to 12 hours," a deputy attorney general tells the Times. Galiano allegedly failed to pay the minimum wage to at least 25 workers at the beloved Arthur Avenue Bakery while forcing them to work up to 80 hours a week with no overtime pay, from 2004 to last year. He's also accused of trying to cover up his behavior through tax fraud and business-record manipulation. And when the investigation heated up, he allegedly made death threats against workers who talked.
A former bakery employee, who refused to give his name for fear of retribution, tells the Post that Galiano is a "very aggressive man. I'm glad he's under arrest. A person like that you don't know how he's going to react." Galiano faces up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine; according to the Daily News he was sentenced to a year's probation in 2007 for lying to a federal grand jury investigating the Genovese family. The Labor Department has also brought similar worker-abuse charges against the owner of two Bronx gas stations and a car wash. Labor Commissioner Patricia Smith tells the News, "These individuals were really bad actors. They retaliated against workers. They made them retract statements. They told workers to leave through the back doors to avoid investigators."
