A thriving Queens restaurant and catering hall – which has a contract with the Parks Department despite alleged mob ties – keeps such shoddy records that it’s impossible to tell how much taxpayers are losing from unreported revenue, city Comptroller Bill Thompson charges in an explosive audit.
Based on the receipts they could find, Thompson’s auditors said the Merissa Restaurant Corp., which operates Caffe on the Green in Bayside, owes the city $120,607 in fees for nearly $1 million in unreported income during 2006 and 2007.
The company, which vigorously disputes the findings, paid the Parks Department $958,541 in fees on $9,785,410 in reported receipts during that period.
Thompson’s auditors were so suspicious of the operation that they posed as patrons on eight occasions to see if their receipts were recorded in the restaurant’s books.
Two teams of auditors dined on Jan. 28 and Jan. 30, 2007, but “a cash expenditure of $85.07, including sales tax, made by one team was not included in the point-of-sales reports,” the audit said.
Another sale for $83.72 on Aug. 3, 2007, also somehow didn’t make it onto the books, the auditors said.
Those were just the first of the red flags.
Merissa officials claimed they did not use, and therefore couldn’t provide, banquet-event calendars for 2005, 2006 or 2007.
But when notified that the auditors, posing as prospective clients, had seen a large red ledger book titled “2007 Banquet/Function Reservations,” they changed their tune.
“The banquet manager was new,” Merissa officials explained.
The auditors suggested the accounting flaws weren’t accidental.
Howard Weiss, the catering hall’s lawyer, countered that no under-reporting was uncovered, and that Thompson came up with the six-figure bill largely by counting tips as revenue, a change from previous practice.
Last year, The Post reported that the contract to operate the popular Caffe on the Green has been held since 1992 by Joseph Franco, who is listed by law-enforcement officials as a member of the Gambino crime family.
Sid Davidoff, Franco’s lawyer, denied his client is involved with organized crime in any way, and said he is being smeared by “innuendo.”