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The city’s consumer and worker-protection agency is teaming up with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to more closely pursue wage theft, worker exploitation and other economic crimes, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced Aug. 20.
Under a new memorandum of understanding between the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, the agencies will share information, investigative strategies and, where permitted, confidential data to coordinate civil and criminal enforcement.
“If someone steals your wages, harasses you out of your home or scams you because of your immigration status, that’s a crime, and we're going after it like one,” Mamdani said in a statement. “DCWP and the Manhattan D.A.'s Office are now sharing files, sharing leads, and moving together.”
The agencies will retain independent authority over their respective cases but can coordinate investigations and pursue parallel civil and criminal proceedings when appropriate.
The announcement of the partnership arrives as DCWP has stepped up enforcement against companies accused of shortchanging workers, particularly in the city’s delivery-app industry, building on an increasingly aggressive enforcement posture from DCWP Commissioner Samuel Levine.
In June, DCWP and the city's Law Department asked a federal court to block delivery company Motoclick from operating in New York, alleging the company violated the city’s delivery-worker minimum-pay law and deducted money directly from workers’ pay.
The city said Motoclick reported paying workers as little as $3.67 an hour in May, well below the city’s minimum-pay laws.
The agency has also secured millions of dollars in restitution from larger delivery platforms. In January, Uber Eats, Fantuan and HungryPanda agreed to pay a combined $5.195 million in restitution, penalties and damages over alleged violations affecting more than 49,000 delivery workers. Uber also agreed to reinstate workers who had allegedly been wrongfully deactivated.
More recently, DCWP said its enforcement of new tipping protections had generated an estimated $104 million in additional tips for delivery workers since January. The agency said the city’s roughly 70,000 app-based delivery workers were on pace to earn an additional $184 million annually.
The Manhattan D.A.’s Office, meanwhile, has pursued wage theft through criminal prosecutions through its Worker Protection Unit, created in 2023. In its 2024 annual report, the office highlighted guilty pleas from a Grimaldi’s Pizzeria owner and Manhattan manager who admitted to stealing $32,080 in wages from 18 employees.
The stolen wages were returned to the workers.
Bragg has made wage theft and worker exploitation a central aspect of his office’s agenda, including through a Stolen Wage Fund intended to compensate workers whose pay has been stolen.
“We need all hands on deck to protect the New Yorkers who are bearing the brunt of the affordability crisis,” Bragg said. “By partnering with the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, we will be better equipped to ensure accountability through efficient, effective criminal and civil proceedings.”
DCWP has long referred cases to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for criminal review, according to the administration. The MOU formalizes and expands that relationship, allowing the agencies to share information and coordinate investigative actions while maintaining their separate legal authority.
“This partnership allows New York City to work smarter and better to deliver economic justice faster,” Levine said.
The agreement also covers tenant harassment and fraud targeting immigrants. The agencies plan to share information on cases involving vulnerable tenants and immigrant New Yorkers and will hold a boroughwide outreach event with labor, consumer-protection and immigration organizations.
For workers, officials said, the arrangement could mean that complaints initially handled through DCWP’s civil enforcement system are more readily evaluated for potential criminal violations.
“New Yorkers who do the right thing and go to work every day deserve a city that has their back,” Mamdani said.
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