Harrison trash hauler Ralph Mancini, convicted last year of bilking customers out of more than $800,000, has been accused of defrauding an associate in another deal.
Ralph Zingaro claims that Mancini and County Waste Management Inc. “had no intention of honoring their promise” to pay him $100,000, in a lawsuit filed Jan. 7 in Westchester Supreme Court.
Mancini owned and operated County Waste Management, from his house in Harrison, serving customers in Westchester and Putnam counties and Fairfield County, Connecticut.
He admitted in a November 2019 plea agreement with federal prosecutors that he overbilled 17 commercial customers from 2008 to 2016. He fabricated the tonnage of collected trash to inflate collection and dumping charges.
Zingaro began working as a sales manager for County Waste Management in 2003, according to his LinkedIn profile.
A year ago ”“ after Mancini pleaded guilty to mail fraud but before he was sentenced by a federal judge ”“ he sold County Waste Management”™s client list to City Carting, according to Zingaro.
City Carting of Stamford agreed to pay Mancini an “earnout,” an additional lump sum payment, if revenue from the new clients equaled or exceeded a “certain amount in revenue,” according to the lawsuit.
City Carting hired Zingaro, the complaint states, and Mancini offered to pay him $100,000 if he maintained enough business to ensure the earnout.
The complaint does not put a value on the earnout but states that it was well in excess of the $100,000 offered to Zingaro.
Zingaro claims he achieved the goal and Mancini received the earnout, but Mancini has refused to pay the $100,000 fee.
Zingaro also accuses Mancini of failing to maintain appropriate business records and of intermingling corporate and personal assets, but provides no examples.
He charges Mancini with breaches of contract, unjust enrichment, fraud and negligent misrepresentation.
Last March, U.S. District Judge Nelson S. Roman sentenced Mancini to time served and two years of supervised release, for mail fraud. He ordered Mancini to pay $838,989 in restitution to his victims and to forfeit $1 million to the government.
County Waste Management is now known as Old CWM Inc., according to a state Division of Corporations record. It is based in the Bronx, with Mancini as CEO.
Mancini was not available to tell his side of the story.
“He comes down once in a while and hangs out,” said an unidentified man who answered the phone at Old CWM. “I”™ll tell him about it (the lawsuit).”
Purchase attorney Diana M. Malave represents Zingaro.