Erasmo Ponce, owner of Tortilleria Chinantla, Where Worker Died, Admits Payroll Violations Erasmo Ponce, the owner of a Brooklyn tortilla factory where a worker died last year after falling into a mixing machine, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to unrelated charges of failing to pay adequate wages and failing to secure workers" compensation insurance for his employees, the office of New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman said in a statement. As part of his plea, Mr. Ponce is to be sentenced to 90 days in prison, to be served on weekends, and ordered to pay $412,678.27 in restitution, officials said. "Employers have basic, fundamental responsibilities to their employees," Mr. Schniederman said. Mr. Ponce and his company have pled guilty to violating laws which are essential for the well-being of New York's working people, and now they have been held accountable. Appearing in Brooklyn Criminal Court, Mr. Ponce, a Mexican immigrant, admitted that he had failed to pay his employees legally mandated overtime wages for time they worked over 40 hours a week, Mr. Schneiderman's office said. He also admitted that he had failed to secure workers" compensation insurance for employees during two periods - June to October 2009 and March 2010 to January 2011 - and had filed state tax returns that failed to list all of his employees, thereby avoiding payment of contributions to the state's Unemployment Insurance Fund, the attorney general's office said. Mr. Ponce pleaded guilty to one count of failure to pay wages, a misdemeanor. In addition, on behalf of his corporation, Tortilleria Chinantla, he pleaded guilty to another count of failure to pay wages and a count of failure to secure workers" compensation insurance, a felony, Mr. Schneiderman's office said. He is scheduled to be sentenced next Jan. 8. Mr. Ponce, a widely respected businessman and community leader in New York's Mexican diaspora, was arrested in March and faced 26 felony counts and 23 misdemeanor counts. The case dates back to Jan. 24, 2011, when Juan Baten, a Guatemalan worker at his tortilla factory in Bushwick, died after falling into a large machine used to mix tortilla dough. Mr. Baten was crushed in the machine's churning mechanism. In the days after the accident, state and federal regulators swooped down on the factory and began scrutinizing Mr. Ponce's operation. State officials quickly discovered that the company had been operating without workers" compensation insurance for nearly a year and they shut the factory down. The state eventually allowed the business to reopen, but last July, federal officials cited the company for safety violations. Mr. Baten's death and the ensuing investigations have cast a pall over the life story of Mr. Ponce. He moved to the United States from Mexico in 1989 and began doing manual labor. He eventually started a small tortilla-making vending business in New York that, within a decade, grew into a national enterprise with revenue of several million dollars a year. His success made him one of the wealthiest and most influential members of the city's growing Mexican population, and he burnished his reputation with donations to various social and political causes in the region and in Mexico.