Oheka Castle Hit with Wage Theft Lawsuit

Oheka Castle, a catering facility for weddings and lavish events in Huntington, Long Island, has been hit with a wage theft class action by a former server and bartender. According to the federal court Complaint filed by the attorneys for the workers, the catering facility (which was once the second largest residence in the United States) developed a fraudulent timekeeping scheme in order to avoid the payment of overtime premiums to their waitstaff.  When workers worked more than forty hours in a single workweek, they were required to carry over their hours to subsequent weeks, so that company records would not reflect that they worked more than forty hours in a given workweek.  In addition, the catering facility regularly required workers whose hours approached forty hours in a workweek to clock out of the company’s biometric timekeeping system and continue working. Attorneys for the workers allege that the catering hall misappropriated tips belonging to servers and bartenders.  The Complaint alleges that owner Gary Melius personally confiscated cash tips left by patrons for other service staff.  Moreover, Oheka charges patrons of their restaurant and catering services, a “service charge” of up to 22% which is added to the bill, leading patrons to believe that the service charges would be paid to the service staff.  According to the lawsuit, however, Oheka violated the New York Labor Law because it did not remit any of those service charges to the service staff.