A Trumbull man has admitted his role in a years-long scheme that siphoned money from Success Village Apartments, a 924-unit housing cooperative straddling Bridgeport and Stratford, through inflated and sometimes entirely fake invoices from the plumbing and heating contractors he owned. Richard J. Messina, 54, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Monday.
Messina owned two contracting firms at the center of the case: Umbrella Mechanical, a New Jersey-based company he co-owned with Carmine Gentile, and RJM Mechanical, registered in Connecticut, according to ctpost.com. Both companies offered commercial and residential plumbing, heating and air conditioning work, and both ended up billing Success Village for jobs prosecutors say were either overpriced or never done at all. Umbrella began providing plumbing services to the co-op in June 2022, working on piping and boilers tied to the complex's heat and hot water systems, while RJM later handled similar heat and hot water plumbing work in July 2024, according to court records cited by the Hartford Courant.
Court records also indicate that Charles Pitcher, who served as Success Village's general manager, referred Messina and Umbrella Mechanical to the co-op as a plumbing contractor in the first place. Pitcher has already pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing, as has Gentile, according to Patch. Messina's plea, entered this week, makes him the third person to admit guilt in the case.
How the Invoices Were Rigged
Prosecutors say Messina, Gentile and Pitcher worked together from June 2022 through September 2024 to submit fraudulent invoices and payment requests for work that either was not performed or was billed at artificially inflated prices. The invoices were not the product of competitive bidding, contained what the government called objectively unreasonable markups, and in some cases charged Success Village for goods and services that were never delivered, per the same account from ctpost.com.
During that period, Success Village paid Umbrella Mechanical roughly $2,631,769.71 and RJM Mechanical about $99,414.11, the outlet reported. Pitcher and a second individual identified in court filings only as Person-2 allegedly arranged to receive a cut of those payments as a kickback for steering the work to Messina's companies.
Conflicting Figures on the Kickback Scheme
Accounts of exactly how much was skimmed, and at what rate, differ slightly depending on the source. ctpost.com reported that Umbrella Mechanical and RJM Mechanical agreed to divert 20 percent of their Success Village payments to Pitcher and Person-2, totaling roughly $546,000 over the course of the conspiracy. The Hartford Courant, meanwhile, described the diversion rate as falling somewhere between about 10 and 30 percent of payments, with more than $526,000 of Umbrella's roughly $2.63 million in receipts allegedly funneled to the pair. Neither figure has been resolved publicly, and both outlets attribute their numbers to court records in the case.
As part of his plea, Messina agreed to a forfeiture money judgment of at least $750,000 and to pay restitution of at least $1.5 million, Patch reported. He was released on a $100,000 bond pending sentencing. Conspiracy to commit wire fraud carries a maximum prison term of 20 years.
A Co-op Already Under Outside Oversight
The fraud allegations surfaced against the backdrop of broader turmoil at Success Village, a sprawling complex of 96 separate buildings that was placed under a court-appointed receiver in 2024 after facing severe management, financial and infrastructure problems, according to ctpost.com. The scale of the property, nearly a thousand units spread across dozens of buildings, is part of what made it a target-rich environment for contractors billing for phantom repairs.
The investigation into the embezzlement scheme is being jointly conducted by the FBI, the IRS Criminal Investigation division and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and remains open, according to Hartford Business Journal. With Messina, Gentile and Pitcher all having now pleaded guilty, attention turns to their sentencing dates, which have not yet been set, and to how much of the diverted money, if any, will ultimately be recovered for the housing cooperative's residents.
