A Rye Brook plumbing company is suing two former employees for $1 million for allegedly stealing business.
Paraco Plumbing accused Edwin Pinto and Melquin Pocheco of unjust enrichment in a complaint filed March 22 in Westchester Supreme Court.
Pinto used his position “to siphon clients away” from Paraco, according to the complaint, and he schemed with Pocheco to divert workers to their own projects, steal supplies, and rig bids for contracts.
Pinto and Pocheco did not reply to a message asking for their side of the story.
Paraco Plumbing is the trade name of Residential Energy JV, a business formed in 2022 by Paraco Gas and Thuesen Mechanical Corp. It installs and maintains HVAC, plumbing and water systems in the lower Hudson Valley and Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Pinto began working for Thuesen Mechanical in 2003 and became a crew manager in 2017. Unbeknownst to Paraco, the complaint states, he formed Pinto Plumbing & Heating Corp., of Carmel, Putnam County, in September 2023.
Pocheco, of Carmel, worked for Thuesen for many years and left the company about five years ago, the complaint states. Now he owns Ethans Plumbing & Heating.
Paraco president Kent Thuesen states in an affidavit that he became suspicious last summer after his company submitted a $300,000 bid to install plumbing, radiant heating and a snow melt system for a house in Amenia, Dutchess County. The contract went to Ethans Plumbing.
Thuesen claims that a business acquaintance tipped him off that Pinto was diverting Paraco customers to Ethans Plumbing.
Last year, Paraco bid $175,000 for a fire suppression and plumbing project at Silo Ridge Field Club, a gated community in Amenia where condominium units sell for up to $5.8 million and houses for $15 million.
Ethans Plumbing got the contract, according to the complaint, and Pinto, who managed a Paraco crew at Silo Ridge, allegedly poached two employees to work for Ethans.
“Accordingly,” Thuesen says, “early this year I placed a GPS tracker in defendant’s Pinto company vehicle.”
The tracker allegedly revealed that Pinto was repeatedly at Ethans Plumbing jobsites.
He also claims that Pinto stole Paraco’s supplies for his own customers.
Pinto was fired on March 22.
Paraco charged Pinto and Pinto Plumbing with breach of the duty of good faith and loyalty. It charged Pinto and Pocheco and their companies with unjust enrichment and misappropriation of confidential or proprietary information.
Paraco’s attorney, Andrew D. Brodnick, of Rye Brook, is asking the court to order the defendants to not solicit Paraco’s employees or customers, not use its proprietary information, and to pay $1 million in damages.
