Queens Contractors Fined Over Playground Fraud

Construction fraud cases can sound abstract — until you remember the job here was a public playground and the workers were the ones getting squeezed. The news is simple: New York City says three contractors tied to the Hunts Point Playground reconstruction in the Bronx have agreed to pay $618,495.40 after a prevailing-wage investigation. Two of them — Amin Electrical Corp. and Green Builders Group of NY Corp. — were also barred from public work after investigators said they forged records and ran a kickback scheme. ### Who got hit? The settlement names two Queens-based subcontractors, Amin Electrical Corp. and Green Builders Group of NY Corp., plus their prime contractor, D & S Restoration, Inc. The case came out of work on the Hunts Point Playground reconstruction project, which is a public job and therefore location. ### What did investigators say they did? The ugly part is the paperwork. City investigators said Amin Electrical and Green Builders forged workers’ signatures on affidavits. The Comptroller’s office also said the subcontractors required workers to pay kickbacks. That matters because payroll fraud on public jobs is usually not just about underpaying someone quietly — it often depends on fake records that make the books look clean when they are not. ### How many workers were affected? The city tied the settlement to 24 workers on the Bronx project. Investigators said those workers were underpaid on prevailing wages and supplemental benefits. So this was not a tiny bookkeeping dispute over one paycheck — it was a multiworker case on a taxpayer-funded project, with both wages and benefits shorted. ### Why is the dollar figure so specific? The total settlement is $618,495.40. That bundle covers back wages, interest, and civil penalties. Basically, the city is trying to do two things at once — get money back to workers and punish the contractors enough that cheating is not just a cost of doing business. That structure is standard in the city’s prevailing-wage enforcement system, where settlements often combine restitution with penalties owed to the city. ### Why was D&S Restoration included? D&S Restoration was the prime contractor above the two subcontractors. Even when the direct abuse happens lower down the chain, prime contractors can still end up in settlements tied to public-work compliance. The point is straightforward: the city does not want general contractors pretending they had no responsibility for what happened under their contract. ### What does “debarred” mean here? It means Amin Electrical and Green Builders cannot bid on or work on certain public contracts for a set period because the violations were deemed willful. New York City uses debarment for the worst prevailing-wage cases, especially when falsified payroll records are involved. So this is more than a fine — it is a temporary ban from taxpayer-funded work. ### Why is this landing now? Levine announced the case on April 30, 2026 as part of a broader update saying his office had recovered just over $1 million in back wages, interest, and penalties across five settlements in his first four months as comptroller. This Hunts Point case was the biggest of the five by far. ### Bottom line? This is what wage-theft enforcement looks like when the city pushes past back pay and into contractor bans. Workers on a Bronx playground job got shorted, investigators said the records were faked to hide it, and now the firms are paying up — with two of them shut out of public work for the time being.