PKF O’Connor Davies accounting firm claims that a former partner in a firm it acquired stole trade secrets and poached clients in violation of a separation agreement.
PKF accused Frank Giordano III of getting former clients to move their accounting work to another firm, in a complaint filed June 12 in U.S. District Court, White Plains.
“The frequency and flagrancy of  Giordano’s poaching efforts increased,” the complaint states, after he was hired by a competing firm.
Efforts to find Giordano’s contact information, to ask for his side of the story, failed.
Giordano worked for Judelson, Giordano and Seigel CPA for 15 years. He developed a specialty in the beer and beverage distribution industry, handled some of the largest clients, and served as the administrative partner for several years.
But the firm stripped him of his title, the complaint alleges, “after he flagrantly violated his fiduciary duties and obligations to JGS.”
The firm terminated him in 2018. Ten months later in May 2019, according to the complaint, he signed an agreement with JGS retroactively restricting his activities.
He agreed to never use any JGS confidential information for any purpose, not to work for or acquire any existing JGS clients for five years, and not work within 10 miles of any JGS office for three years.
PKF, based in Harrison, is one of the largest accounting, tax and advisory firms in the nation. In January 2022, it acquired JGS assets in a deal it depicts as a merger or “combination” of firms. It assumed JGS’s rights and obligations under the Giordano termination agreement.
Even before PKF took over, Giordano allegedly violated the termination deal by working for American Petroleum Equipment & Construction Co., a five-year client of JGS. APECO moved its accounting work to a new firm, RBT CPAs.
He lost the APECO job in 2019 and went to work for RBT, whose Poughkeepsie office is across the street from a JGS office.
Giordano allegedly boasted to JGS clients that he had access to proprietary information that made him uniquely capable of providing accounting services to beer distributors, a niche market that JGS had cultivated.
The complaint contends that Giordano was referring to a spreadsheet that Giordano’s father had developed 20 years ago and that PKF now owns. The spreadsheet includes accounting methods and practices and other crucial information about beer distributors that give PKF a competitive advantage over competitors
After the merger last year, beer distributors D. Bertoline & Sons Inc. and F&F Distributors Inc., former Giordano clients at JGS, moved their accounting work to RBT. Another former JGS client, PLC Group, did the same.
“By poaching PLC, D. Bertoline, APECO, and F&F,” the complaint states, “Giordano violated the agreement’s restrictive covenant prohibiting him from soliciting or providing services to any of JGS’s clients within five years.”
PKF accused Giordano of violating the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, misappropriation of trade secrets, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, interference with prospective economic advantage, as well as slander, for allegedly suggesting to a PKF client that it offers inferior accounting services.
PKF is demanding unspecified damages and an order requiring Giordano to return its proprietary information.
The firm is represented by White Plains attorneys Russell M. Yankwitt, Corey M. Briskin and Michael Reed.
