Mar 25
2025
Wage theft widespread in Western New York
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The theft of employee wages is widespread across Western New York, data from state and federal labor departments show.
State and federal labor investigators found some 1,900 regional employers withheld $17.1 million in pay and benefits from 23,613 workers over the past decade.
That’s an average of $3,066 per affected worker, according to data collected by Documented and analyzed by Investigative Post. Some employers were found to owe a handful of employees large amounts — more than $40,000 in some cases — while others were found to owe many workers small amounts. The median worker was returned $500 due to the work of the labor investigators.
“Wage theft is prevalent in Western New York, but it’s not just a Western New York problem, it’s a national problem,” said Michael Dolce, a Buffalo attorney who represents unions and workers.
See all data for Western New York here
The biggest case listed in the data concerns a local construction firm found to owe 19 employees a collective $775,000. Other cases involve some of the region’s largest and most well-known companies, including New Era Cap, Tim Hortons and the Anchor Bar.
Restaurants and construction companies are where the problem is most prevalent, the data shows.
Local eateries — from white tablecloth establishments to food trucks — accounted for 438 findings of wage theft. On average, about $1,100 was withheld from each of 8,500 workers. Partners Pizzeria in Cheektowaga and Labyrinth Press Co. & Brazil Lounge in Jamestown were among the largest cases.
Various Tim Hortons franchises, too, were found liable under wage theft statutes, according to the data.
Donate to support our nonprofit newsroomAnother 199 claims came from local construction workers. In those cases, labor investigators found that 1,859 workers were owed an average of $2,500 each. Titan Development of Gasport, Grabber and Sons Landscaping of Williamsville and Otis Eastern Service of Wellsville were responsible for the largest cases, each found to owe workers more than $100,000.
Offices, retail stores and healthcare facilities also saw significant numbers of wage theft cases, the data shows. Investigators found that Father Baker Manor, Buffalo General Medical Center and Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital all withheld thousands of dollars from their employees.
Candace Morrison, a Buffalo labor attorney, said wage theft can take many forms.
“Whether it’s not paying for all hours worked, whether it is not paying full benefits that are due, whether it’s denying sick time under the law … [wage theft] can affect so many low-wage workers,” she said.
Wage theft can also take the form of unpaid overtime, withheld tips, and failure to reimburse employees for equipment they purchased.
The data, collected from both the U.S. Department of Labor and the New York State Department of Labor, were released by the New York City-based outlet Documented in February. Investigative Post subsequently analyzed figures from the past decade, 2015 through 2024, for the eight counties of Western New York.
Large and notable cases
The database includes a total of 2,041 wage theft cases across those eight counties between January 2015 and May 2024.
In 30 of those, labor investigators found employers had failed to pay workers $100,000 or more.
Titan Development, a construction firm based in Gasport, was responsible for the largest case by far. That firm was found to have withheld $775,000 from 19 employees — about $41,000 each — in 2015.
Reached by phone, a woman who identified herself as the owner questioned why her case was being publicized. She declined to give her name to a reporter.
“It was taken care of years ago and paid and all said and done,” she said.
The second largest case belongs to United Memorial Medical Center, a hospital in Batavia. Investigators found the center failed to pay $654,000 to 219 employees — around $3,000 each. In a statement, hospital spokesperson Cristina Domingues Umbrino said the case stemmed from a 2018 audit of the facility.
“Working with the DOL, UMMC adjusted its pay practices, trained staff on these changes and compensated staff that were underpaid,” Domingues Umbrino said.
Then there’s Grabber and Sons Landscaping, located in Williamsville. Investigators found the landscaper withheld $460,000 from 64 workers.
Rich Grabenstatter, owner of the company, said his case stemmed from the pandemic, when he “had a few employees who wanted to start problems.” Fighting their claims with the labor department proved “very difficult,” he said, and his attorney advised him to settle.
“Everybody’s been paid and everything has been settled,” he said.
State labor investigators found Labyrinth Press Co. & Brazil Lounge — a coffee shop, bar and vegetarian and vegan eatery in Jamestown — owed $147,000 to 81 employees. Owner Jeffrey James explained he mistakenly included kitchen staff in the tip pool — meaning that he owed tip money to the waitstaff who should have originally received it.
“My lawyer and I firmly agree that our case is not that of wage theft,” he told Investigative Post. “Every penny of tips collected was always distributed to employees — according to [the state], some of those employees, though, were not eligible to participate in the distribution of those tips.”
James said he is paying a settlement on an installment plan. Partners Pizzeria, subject of another notable restaurant case, has since closed and a business owner could not be reached for comment.
Other cases, smaller in size, concern some of the most notable businesses and organizations in Western New York.
Tim Hortons, across multiple stores and 21 cases, was found to have not paid $256,000 to nearly 1,600 employees, or about $160 each. The cases span 2015 to 2023. A company spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
Anchor Bar, too, was found liable for wage theft claims at the Amherst and Williamsville locations. Across three cases in 2017, 2018 and 2019, the famous wing stop was found to have withheld nearly $78,000 from 25 employees, or about $3,111 each. A company representative did not return a phone call.
Hat and athletic apparel manufacturer New Era made the list of wage theft claims, too. In 2020, the downtown Buffalo-headquartered firm was found to have withheld $102,000 in pay from six employees, or $17,000 each. The company did not respond to emails seeking comment.
Another case concerns D.V. Brown & Associates, one of the contractors hired by the Buffalo Bills to construct the team’s new stadium. The firm was found to owe $22,000 to a single employee — one of just a handful of cases investigators completed last year. A company representative did not return a phone call from Investigative Post.
The big picture
In all, the data shows that Western New York companies withheld an average of $1.9 million from workers each year.
In 2023, the last full year for which data are available, local employers were ordered to return $800,000 to nearly 2,200 workers. In 2018, the peak year, labor department investigators ordered businesses to return $2.7 million to 3,600 employees.
The most common forms of wage theft were minimum wage workers not getting paid overtime or workers being misclassified, according to the state labor department. That included, for example, treating workers as independent contractors when in fact they were staff employees.
The New York Department of Labor has 235 staff members assigned to the issue of wage theft, an agency spokesperson said in a statement. Statewide, those investigators and support staff recovered $34 million for more than 46,000 workers, the spokesperson said.
Still, Dolce and other experts said the agencies tasked with doing so are understaffed.
If every instance of wage theft was reported, and every case thoroughly investigated, Dolce said, “the actual damages would be far, far higher.”
“There are just so many barriers for a worker to pursue their missing wages that it makes it difficult, I think, to track and difficult to really get a good number of victims of wage theft in this area and frankly across the country,” said Morrison, of the firm Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria.
The biggest penalty the state can impose on a business owner is a fine. Other states allow for the seizure of a business’s property in particularly egregious cases. Gov. Kathy Hochul has proposed adding such enforcement measures — namely placing liens on business’s property and seizing financial assets — in this year’s budget.
“This helps level the playing field for employees, ensuring businesses that are violating wage laws are held to account,” the labor department spokesperson said.
Wage theft cases can take months, in some cases years, to settle. That’s reflected in the most recent data, for 2024, which lists just nine cases settled across the Western New York region as of July, far fewer than prior year totals.
In those recent cases, investigators found that the employers withheld $78,000 from 61 employees, or about $6,500 each.
The data suggest that the pandemic has had a lasting impact on how quickly cases are settled. Prior to 2020, state and federal labor investigators were settling around 283 cases annually. During 2020 and after, that average dropped to 155 annually.
ProPublica reported in 2023 that the state was particularly lax in collecting fines levied against business owners found liable for withholding pay.
A case involving the Buffalo transportation firm Riverside Line dates back to 2018 and ranks as one of the region’s largest. Yet five years after investigators determined that owner Mugisha F. Sahini withheld from his workers, he still hadn’t paid.
ProPublica reported Sahini still owed 93 workers nearly $425,000. A company representative did not return a call seeking comment for this story.
Wage theft a felony — and underreported
As of September 2023, wage theft can be prosecuted as felony larceny under the state’s penal code. Such cases require just $1,000 of pay to be withheld. More than half the cases reviewed by Investigative Post fit those parameters. In terms of wages withheld per worker, about one-third do.
Attorneys and other experts said making wage theft a felony hasn’t stopped the problem.
“New York still has good laws but they’re no good if you can’t enforce them,” Dolce said.
Kait Munro, a spokesperson for the Erie County District Attorney’s office, said the office has received just one complaint of wage theft since the new law went into effect. The DA’s office did not prosecute, however, because “the allegations pre-dated the statute,” Munro said. The Niagara County District Attorney’s office did not return a call seeking comment.
The state labor department now publishes online a database of all employers it has found to owe workers unpaid wages, following a multi-year lawsuit from Documented.
Dolce said the figures from Western New York are almost certainly an undercount.
“A lot of claims do not get reported,” he said. “This list would definitely just be scratching the surface of the wage and hour violations.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated.
