Marcinek
SEYMOUR – A prominent Valley businessman, who is accused of withholding over $200,000 in wages between 2016 and 2021, will return to Superior Court in Derby on Aug. 26.
Michael Marcinek, 67, was arrested in May and charged with five counts of failure to pay wages in connection to complaints raised by employees at AEPM International, an architectural and engineering firm headquartered in Ansonia. He had a scheduled court date on Tuesday (Aug. 13) – his third appearance since the arrest – but his attorney asked the court to continue the case to Aug. 26.
The arrest came after the Connecticut Department of Labor (DOL) started investigating Marcinek’s business practices seven years ago.
Marcinek, a Seymour resident, is a former member of the town’s economic development commission. He was the chairman of the Seymour Permanent Building Committee, and he was a member of the Seymour Community Center Building Committee.
He was introduced as a key player at the 2019 ‘Ansonia State of the City’ address, telling the crowd he had 11 projects going in Ansonia. Meeting minutes from 2021 show he represented Ansonia in a presentation to the Derby Board of Aldermen & Alderwomen about a shared senior center.
AEPM International, known formerly as Fletcher Thompson according to state documents, was founded in 1910. According to the American Institute of Architects, the firm’s past projects include the Timex Group USA Headquarters in Middlebury, a research complex at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, and the Cancer Hospital at Robert Wood Johnson University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
More recently, its projects have included the design of Ansonia’s new senior center on 65 Main St.
Over the last decade, the firm has sunk into financial and legal straits. In 2014, a complaint was raised against Marcinek and five other partners at Fletcher-Thompson for failing to honor a stock purchase agreement. In 2015, three different complaints were raised against the company for failure to pay contractors and honor stock purchase agreements.
By late 2016, the department of labor had begun investigating complaints of unpaid wages at the firm. According to the arrest warrant, Marcinek met with a state investigator that year and said the firm was experiencing financial hardships, and that “he was waiting for upcoming payments from company clients to cover the cost of wages due employees.”
The repayment hadn’t happened by 2017, when a civil case was brought against Marcinek for about $370,000 in unpaid wages to 14 employees. Ten employees would later be added to the complaint with an additional $300,000 claimed.
That same year, CT Post reported that Fletcher-Thompson was evicted from its Bridgeport offices for failure to pay rent. The firm was also ordered to repay over $2 million in owed money to Webster Bank, according to court records. It moved to smaller offices in Ansonia after the eviction.
A 2019 judgment in the civil case required Marcinek to make monthly $10,000 payments toward unpaid wages. No payments were made, according to the warrant.
The warrant cites conversations between the labor department and a Marcinek employee hired in 2015 to help the company prepare for an audit, as well as records provided by that employee.
According to the employee, he discovered during his work that the company had failed to pay $3.5 million in payroll taxes, in addition to unpaid 401K benefits, health insurance, and unemployment taxes. He also said the business had not paid sales taxes, and that it had no worker’s compensation policy.
The charges brought against Marcinek carry up to five years in prison. He is being represented by Trumbull law firm Cotter, Cotter & Mullins.
The Valley Indy left voicemails with Marcinek’s attorney in July as well as Aug. 13, neither of which were returned.
