A Yorktown Heights CPA firm has been accused of dodging subpoenas for evidence against a client that owes nearly $4.4 million to a New Jersey company.
Tri Health Solutions of Hawthorne, New Jersey petitioned Westchester Supreme Court on Nov. 21 to enforce subpoenas issued to Ciccinelli & D’Ippolito CPA’s P.C.
Tri Health is seeking documents and witness testimony about assets held by the accounting firm’s client, Employers Network Association Inc., of Valhalla.
But the accounting firm “feigned excuses” for refusing to comply, the petition states, demonstrating efforts to “hinder, obstruct and delay enforcement.”
The CPA firm and its attorney, Michael. Rosenberg, did not reply to emails asking for responses to the allegations.
Last year, Tri Health was awarded $4,360,629 in a New Jersey arbitration case against Employers Network Association (ENA). The judgment was then “domesticated” in Westchester Supreme Court this past March, so that the debt could be collected here.
The underlying dispute concerns a 2014 deal that Tri Health made to line up union members for ENA’s health and benefits plans, according to court records. For every member of Local 713 International Brotherhood of Trade Unions who signed up for ENA’s plans, Tri Health would be paid $15 to $25 a month.
Tri Health claims that ENA stopped paying the commissions and diverted funds to its owners and officers and other entities they controlled.
From 2019 to 2020, for instance, ENA kept about $20 million in a Chase bank account, according to the petition, but while the New Jersey arbitration case was pending all of the money was transferred out and the account was closed.
Customers were directed to make checks payable to a new entity, Nu Era Benefits Agency, the complaint states, and $8 million was transferred to UBS Inc., a Florida corporation headed by an ENA and Nu Era owner.
Tri Health subpoenaed Ciccinelli & D’Ippolito on Oct. 26 to produce a witness for a deposition on Nov. 14 and for documents about ENA’s finances and assets.
Rosenberg emailed Tri Health’s attorney, George Sitaras, on Nov. 11 and advised that accountant Piero D’Ippolito was unavailable to testify on Nov. 14 because he was out of state.
On Nov. 14, the complaint states, no one from the accounting firm showed up for the deposition and no documents were produced.
And D’Ippolito, according to the complaint, was not out of state. He was “sitting in his office just a short distance away at the scheduled time of the deposition.”
Sitaras had hired private investigator Michael Keenan to check on D’Ippolito. He went to the office in Yorktown Heights pretending to deliver a bottle of wine.
The receptionist confirmed that D’Ippolito was in and led Keenan to his office.
“I asked him if he was Piero,” according to Keenan’s affidavit, “and he responded, Yes.”
D’Ippolito was wary. He wanted to know who the wine was from and he stated, according to a transcript of a video-audio recording, “I don’t want to be getting served papers for clients of mine.”
Keenan said he did not know who sent the wine, he was just working for a delivery service.
On the same day as the delivery ruse, Sataras says he advised Rosenberg that the CPA firm was in default and he demanded a new deposition date. Rosenberg allegedly asked on Nov. 15 to reschedule the deposition after the first week of December because D’Ippolito was in Florida.
Tri Health says ENA also has evaded a subpoena and it claims that the accounting firm and its lawyers are using delay tactics to hinder enforcement of the $4.4 million judgment.
It is asking the court to compel the CPA firm to produce documents and appear for an examination under oath.
