Union Official: Contractor Facing Scores of Fraud Charges in E. Bay 'Pulled Same Scam' in San Francisco -- and Then-Mayor Willie Brown Was Warned About This

Don Feria

A woman is led away by police during a May raid on NBC General Contractors' Oakland offices

​On Wednesday, we wrote about the beleaguered NBC General Contractors, a company facing 40 felony counts in Alameda County for allegedly ripping off its vulnerable, Chinese immigrant workers and the state of California in a massive fraud scheme.

An excellent cover story in the East Bay Express documented how owner Monica Ung purportedly forced her underpaid workers into six-day weeks of 12-hour days -- but reported to government oveseers she was paying them prevailing wages for part-time work. She is accused of getting away with this for years on the other side of the Bay. But a number of people told SF Weekly they had reason to believe fraud occurred during NBC's San Francisco jobs as well. Today, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 6 head John O'Rourke told SF Weekly that he knows Ung was "pulling the same scam" here -- because he talked to the allegedly defrauded NBC workers on the job at Sanchez School earlier this decade who told him what was happening.

What's more, O'Rourke says he had a face-to-face meeting with then-Mayor Willie Brown to inform him that this kind of fraud was going on in San Francisco public works jobs. Brown is now the private attorney for none other than Monica Ung.

O'Rourke says that the Chinese workers on the San Francisco job told him they were being paid a fraction of the state-mandated prevailing wage and, to boot, were pulling 72-hour work weeks -- despite NBC's reports to government overseers that the men were paid prevailing wage for working 24 hours a week. But when O'Rourke asked the workers to testify and put an end to the alleged abuses, they shied away. "They were afraid to come out of the shadows," says O'Rourke.

NBC has worked three San Francisco jobs in the recent past: The aformentioned Sanchez School gig; at the Mission Neighborhood Center, and, at the Moscone Club House.

Deputy City Controller Monique Zmuda told SF Weekly that $2.33 million was paid by the city to NBC in fiscal 2008 and $389,821 was paid in fiscal '09. Since there have been no complaints leveled against NBC, she says there are no plans at this time to investigate whether the company was executing fraud here of the type it is charged with rampantly pulling off elsewhere. Our messages for the San Francisco Unified School District, Recreation and Parks Department, and Department of Public Works querying whether they planned to launch investigations have not yet been returned.

O'Rourke says that the experience with the NBC workers at the Sanchez School led him to request a meeting with then-Mayor Willie Brown.

"I said we need some help. We need to get on board monitoring prevailing wage work; unscrupulous contractors are putting in bids on these jobs that are less than honest contractors can even buy the materials for," recalls O'Rourke, who notes he did not mention NBC by name during the meeting. "He understood and called his department heads and told them they needed to get on it."

So it comes as a great disapointement to O'Rourke that Brown would choose to represent Ung in this case.

"Willie was a great friend to the building trades. His hand is on so many great projects that put our members to work and improved the city for generations to come. So, yeah, I'm disappointed," said O'Rourke.

Brown hasn't returned our messages.