https://archive.is/eSO3Y#selection-373.63-373.124

>Prosecutors on Friday charged Lulzim “Luis” Shabaj, 41, in New York State Supreme Court with scheme to defraud, saying that he and his twin brother Gzim “Jimmy” Shabaj had stolen thousands of dollars from the Spanish-speaking workers by declining to pay them for their work at a site in Harlem.

>Prosecutors said that Gzim Shabaj, who was charged earlier this week, had responded to one worker’s early September request to be paid by pulling out a knife and, with his other hand, repeatedly punching the worker in the head until his ear bled.

A couple of cheap scumbags. I'm sure they'll get a slap on the wrist and before you know it Eric Adams will be one of their good friends helping to give them a second chance.

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Hell yea

Exploiting immigrants. Happens a lot sadly.

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>Prosecutors said that Gzim Shabaj, who was charged earlier this week, had responded to one worker’s early September request to be paid by pulling out a knife and, with his other hand, repeatedly punching the worker in the head until his ear bled.
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>About three weeks later, a second day laborer asked for his money. This time, prosecutors said, Gzim Shabaj ripped a side mirror off the worker’s van and repeatedly hit the vehicle with the detached mirror, denting a hubcap and cracking the windshield. He also hit the laborer in the shoulder, and threatened to call immigration enforcement on him, cursing at him and telling him: “Hispanics, get out of the country.”

As a vocal critic of DA Bragg, I'm glad to see Bragg doing something.

Here, immigrants exploiting fellow immigrants.

Not going to lie, I saw the title and assumed they were going to the same job pretending to be one person and doing insane overtime

Gjim Shabaj has an IMDB credit for "Albanian Gangster", lol.

I was gonna say that I was glad to see law enforcement finally doing something about wage theft, but this isn't that. These dudes are goons. One already did time for grand larceny.

Seems pretty unlikely that we're gonna see a trend of local DA's actually targeting the more common forms of wage theft, which are all too often treated as a civil matter, when they shouldn't be.

Give everyone green cards and work permits regardless of their country of origin and color of their skin and this won't happen

Good news: In spite of the title, the DA is not cracking down on ALL twin brothers, just these specific twin brothers, and their company, Three Brothers Construction.

Haha, I was imagining both in front of the judge and neither will admit to it so the judge hits them both with the book.

You have to be a real pos to commit wage theft

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I thought the Legal Aid Society represents indigent folks. Why are they representing these two bozos who stole 7500 from two laborers?

Let them pay the going fee to be defended.

jesus christ what fucking scumbags

but... if we made the system more efficient... how would we take advantage of it for personal gain?

It’s more that the employer’s insurer will strongly encourage a settlement as it’s cheaper than going to court and winning.

These guys don’t pay their workers, you expect them to pay for lawyers. When they realize how fucked they are you’ll see them find money for a private lawyer.

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Wage theft is bigger than every other type of property crime. If you add up all the burglaries and larcenies, wage theft is multiple times larger. Some estimates put it as high as $15 billion per year, and almost all of it happens to people that make under $13/hr.

Wouldn’t that make it harder to win wage theft cases?

Criminal cases can be dropped for a lot of non-merit reasons and require a “beyond any reasonable doubt” burden of proof.

Civil cases only require preponderance of evidence and don’t have strict timelines (such as speedy trial) or onerous discovery requirements on the plaintiff side.

I meant the Legal Aid Society should have rejected them as clients because they don't seem to be indigent owning a construction company.

There are worse defendants out there with public defense representation.

If they don’t have an attorney representing them in court, then the whole case could be canceled because no one can be tried criminally without an attorney.

Lol I first read this as "Two Brothers" and though it was about the pizza joint chain...