Vito Costa, a former employees of the Buildings and Grounds department of the City School District of New Rochelle, was sentenced Wednesday to three years probation after keeping his nose clean over the past year and paying $30,000 in restitution at sentencing. Costa had been on interim probation for the past year. Under terms of his guilty plea last fall he was sentenced just on the misdemeanor charge of falsifying business records.
Last year Talk of the Sound reported on Costa’s guilty plea.
Costa plead guilty on April 7, 2010 to Grand Larceny in the Third Degree and Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree and received Interim Probation. Costa will be re-sentenced on April 6, 2011 on the misdemeanor charge of Falsifying Billing Records, according to Westchester District Attorney Director of Communications Lucian Chalfen. Costa’s conduct over the next year will play a large role in the sentencing.
Chalfen told Talk of the Sound that Costa has already made restitution of $40,000. In December, the New Rochelle Board of Education voted unanimously to begin litigation against Vito Costa and A 2 Z Heating and Air Conditioning and V & M Vending, two companies controlled by Costa.
Costa was arraigned in August 2009 on one count of Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, a class “D” Felony and one count of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, a class “E” Felony based on evidence that Costa “submitted weekly time sheets which falsely reflected hours worked”. The DA alleged that each Costa would claim that he worked on school grounds from 7:00 am to 3:30 pm when, in fact, he worked a fraction of that time. Investigators from D.A.’s office observed the defendant off school grounds engaged in “activity unrelated to his school job”. Costa was facing a maximum of two and one half to seven years in state prison.
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