New York’s first-ever deputy mayor for economic justice says her job is to grow the economy by delivering on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s agenda for helping those who need it the most.

In: Affordable housing, free childcare and city-owned grocery stores. 

Out: Billions in tax breaks and incentives to big developers and employers, unless they improve the lives of working class New Yorkers.

In a sharp U-turn from policies pursued by mayors for decades, Deputy Mayor Julie Su says priorities that include building 200,000 new apartments and establishing universal child care will create a healthy economy. 

Gone, she says, are the days when city taxpayers helped fund new office developments that sometimes showed little public benefit. 

“Building housing at the scale that we’re talking about is a job creator and an economic engine,” Su said in a wide ranging interview with THE CITY. “Childcare is both an economic generator because when you grow that industry, there’s jobs in that industry and you allow other people to join the workplace.”

The turnabout is clear from the Mamdani administration’s new approach to tax breaks, favoring them only after tougher scrutiny and with provisions for union labor. Su said taxpayer-funded incentives would require “benefits for working class communities,” though she wasn’t more specific on what that might mean.

Mamdani’s agenda is hemmed in by a $5.4 billion budget deficit and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s refusal to go along with his demands for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and inflation in New York City outpaces the national rate.

Speaking at City Hall, Su — a former top official in President Joe Biden’s Labor Department — emphasized the need for equity in economic growth. 

“This is a little bit of a crude metaphor, but I think about it as we want everybody to have a real slice of the pie,” she said. “We also want to grow the overall pie, and we want to make sure that the pie is filled with good ingredients that make people healthy and happy.”

That includes possibly implementing the mayor’s campaign pledge to nearly double the minimum wage from its current $17 an hour to $30 over the next several years.

Not on the agenda so far are the kind of direct city investments in industries and neighborhoods that have spurred growth in the past.

In the early 2000s, the Bloomberg administration financed the expansion of the 7 subway to the far west side, provided tax breaks to jumpstart the office and luxury residential district at Hudson Yards, and overhauled the management of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to create a home for light manufacturing. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio offered $5 billion in tax breaks in a failed effort to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to the city and pursued growth outside Manhattan with investments and tax incentives. 

Eric Adams pursued projects like turning the Brooklyn Army Terminal into a center for climate innovation companies, provided millions of dollars to help expand the city’s film studios and relentlessly worked to lure tech companies and universities.

“We believe that all tools should be on the table to attract and retain high-quality, family-supporting jobs in New York City,” Su said. “In the past, tax incentives have enriched those at the top of the economic ladder while depriving the city of critical revenue and often failing to yield tangible benefits for working New Yorkers.”

Of a planned Hudson Yards expansion that relied on another $2 billion in public money, a Mamdani spokesperson said: “We are not actively engaged in negotiations to move this project forward at this time.”

A key indication of Mamdani’s economic policy may be who is named to run the Economic Development Corp., a semi-independent agency that has historically been the spearhead for development efforts. 

Shortly after being appointed, Su wrote a memo that called for the agency to focus on “the quality (not just number) of jobs created for the people who call N.Y.C. home,” The New York Times reported, raising alarm among business leaders. Su declined to say where she stood on filling the job but added that EDC is “firing on all cylinders.”

Business leaders are closely watching who will be appointed.

“Folks are still waiting to see who the administration’s point person on business recruitment and job retention will be,” said James Whelan, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York who worked on economic development in the Bloomberg administration. “If you want a progressive city, you need a prosperous city. Someone needs to pay for the progressivity.”

Ruffled Hedge Fund Feathers

Su, who served as California’s labor secretary before joining the Biden administration, moved to address a growing storm over the mayor’s calling out of billionaire hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin by filming a social media post touting the pied-a-terre tax proposal in front of Griffin’s $238 million Manhattan penthouse.

Griffin’s fund, Citadel, moved hundreds of people to New York from Chicago and is in the process of building a new headquarters on Park Avenue — but a letter to employees last Thursday said it might not move ahead with the plan.

“We are about to commence the redevelopment of 350 Park Avenue, creating 6,000 highly paid construction jobs and supporting the creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in mid-town New York,” wrote chief operating officer Gerald Beeson. “The project — if we move forward — will entail more than $6 billion dollars of spending.”

Gov. Hochul announced Tuesday she would meet with Griffin amid continuing media focus on the issue. Su tried to calm the waters in her interview with THE CITY.

“We value Wall Street. We value companies that have made New York City their home,” she said. “We value the job creators who are really fundamental to creating the kind of growth that is required for shared prosperity. And we absolutely welcome the opportunities to work with them to deliver on an economy that works for everybody.”

Su declined to say whether the Administration would support a bill in the City Council to raise the minimum wage, noting uncertainty over whether the city had the power to do that without approval from state legislators.

But she strongly supported the efforts to end what the administration sees as corporate gouging of consumers — especially online. Mamdani has required companies offering online subscriptions provide an easy unsubscribe option, and moved to force hotels to disclose fees more clearly.

Some of Mamdani’s appointees worked for Lina Khan, Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair, who pursued aggressive regulation of tech companies. Khan has emerged as an important adviser to the mayor, and with the Trump Administration undoing much of their work in Washington, they are attempting to reestablish regulations on the city level.

“If you as a company operate in New York City and your practices, including subscription traps, impact New Yorkers, then we are charged with protecting New York workers and consumers,” Su said. “And we are going to exercise our full authority on that front.”

The mayor has taken two steps to aid small businesses in the city. In January he ordered all city agencies to review regulations affecting small firms that could be reduced or eliminated. He also appointed small business development executive Delia Awusi as his “Mom-and-Pop Czar” to help the smallest of those companies.

Mamdani is far from the first mayor to promise changes.

“I’ve been around for four mayors and all of them promised to reduce fines and fees and didn’t,” said a skeptical Laura Rothrock, president of the Long Island City Partnership.

Su says that the agencies have submitted their list of regulations that could be revised and it is under review. She said she understands the failures that have preceded her but added that this administration will be different — and not just by helping small businesses.

“I have been getting advice that we should tinker at the margins rather than set broad goals that people are going to point at, that you failed at,” she said. “That is not who we are. That is not who this mayor is. We have to prove that government can deliver.”

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Mamdani’s ‘Economic Justice’ Deputy Wants a Bigger Pie appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

Every fall, the Wall Street analysts who cover the real estate giant CBRE troop to the company’s local headquarters in the Met Life Building on Park Avenue to hear executives tell them about the state of business and why they should recommend the company’s stock to their clients.

Months ago, before the mayoral election, New York region CEO Mary Ann Tighe had given her presentation and answered the analysts’ questions when, throwing a curveball, she looked at the group and said, “Now I have a question for you.”

“How many of you live in the city?” she asked. About three quarters of the 29 analysts, who looked to be 35 or younger, raised their hands. “And how many of you intend to vote for Mamdani?” she continued. 

Most of the hands stayed up.

Tighe retells that story to make a point. CEOs may have spent millions trying to block the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and now are mobilizing to prevent tax increases on executives like themselves and their companies — but the people who work for them are on the mayor’s side. 

The dichotomy will be important as the city’s leading business group, the Partnership for New York City, crafts an aggressive new approach to Mamdani after its outgoing leader drew criticism during the mayoral campaign over her praise for the young democratic socialist.

But before they attempt to convince voters that the mayor’s progressive policies may harm New York, the partnership’s leaders may have to persuade their own employees.

An analysis by THE CITY found that Mamdani’s mayoral campaign received contributions of more than $242,000 from 1,971 employees of the 300 companies belonging to the partnership.

“You can’t just tell workers to do something and expect them to do it because it’s good for you,” said Bradley Tusk, a key political aide to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and one of the loudest voices calling on the partnership to be more assertive in the city’s rough-and-tumble politics. “If you can’t persuasively explain why it tangibly and directly matters to them, it won’t work.”

Mamdani’s Big Tech Base

The young talent that CEOs say are the reason they keep their companies in New York represent Mamdani’s base. A recent Marist poll showed that the mayor’s strongest approval ratings came from college graduates between the ages of 18 and 29.

Employees at tech companies led the list of contributors, even as Mamdani targets Big Tech for practices like making it difficult to cancel subscriptions.

Google employees – 323 of them, mostly software engineers and researchers – gave more money to Mamdani during his campaign than those from any other partnership company, followed by employees at Amazon and Meta. Google employees donated $55,726.61.

Roughly 40% of the partnership member employees who donated to Mamdani lived in Brooklyn, while nearly 23% reported Manhattan addresses, while others live outside of the city.

The average donation among employees in partnership members was $93, a little lower than the campaign’s final average contribution of $99, with the majority of them small-dollar donations, according to city Campaign Finance Board data.

Until recently, tech company executives skewed to the left, said Julie Samuels, CEO of the local tech trade group Tech: NYC.

“They are young, they live in Brooklyn and what’s interesting is not that they support Mamdani but that for the first time there is a split between tech workers and their bosses,” she said.

She also notes that tech executives have been mostly silent on the topic of the mayor — even as other CEOs work to block Mamdani’s efforts for higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

‘Adverse Reaction’ 

Steven Fulop, the former Jersey City mayor who became CEO of the partnership in January, says the anecdotes and campaign contributions do not necessarily reflect the views of the 800,000 people who work for member companies.

“People had an adverse reaction to the choices that were presented to the electorate in November, and he was best for those people,” Fulop said of Mamdani. “But that doesn’t speak to that segment embracing socialism.”

He says his task at the partnership isn’t to be for or against the mayor but to develop common sense policies to make New York a better place. He suggests it is too early for judgments.

“One hundred days into his term, people thought Eric Adams would be elected president,” Fulop said.

Tighe sees a benefit to the support for Mamdani within New York companies.

“What you have to remember is that, for young people, having a 34-year-old mayor is cool and having him as mayor makes that talent want to live here more,” she said.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Big Business Fears Mamdani. Its Workers Gave Him Big Bucks. appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

As New York City barrels toward a legally mandated shutdown of Rikers Island after years of delays and fierce opposition, the Mamdani administration has tapped a key architect and booster of the original plan to help see it through.

Dana Kaplan, who helped coordinate the city’s blueprint to close the troubled jail complex, has been named the administration’s new “Rikers czar,” THE CITY has learned.

“Dana is a superlative choice to lead this complicated effort,” said Liz Glazer, her former boss at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice. “This is a task that is beyond just Rikers — not just bricks and mortar, but changing the culture inside both for the people incarcerated and the officers.”

Kaplan, whose appointment has not been officially announced, did not immediately respond to a text message seeking comment. THE CITY spoke with two sources close to City Hall who confirmed her hiring. 

In March, the city said it was looking for a so-called Rikers czar to “serve as a trusted advisor to the mayor” and his top team. The salary was listed as $180,000 to $230,000. 

The city is legally required to shut down Rikers Island by 2027 and replace it with a network of smaller jails located near courthouses. 

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has acknowledged that the city will not meet that deadline but he has supported the broader plan and is seeking to move it along. His predecessor, Eric Adams, repeatedly talked about needing a “Plan B” for Rikers Island, but never detailed what that would look like. 

After leaving the mayor’s office in 2022, Kaplan worked with the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform and served as a senior advisor to the Independent Rikers Commission. 

The creation of the Rikers czar was one of the key recommendations of that commission.

New Jails, Old Oppositon

Kaplan’s appointment comes as the city on Wednesday marked a milestone in building the replacement jail system, raising the final steel beam at a new downtown Brooklyn facility set to open in 2029.

“The facilities on Rikers Island are very old, decrepit, and they don’t speak life into our staff or the people in our care,” Correction Commissioner Stanley Richards told reporters. 

Richards recalled how, as a pre-trial detainee on Rikers during his youth, he felt the jail was “punishing” his father, who had to make a long trek to visit him. 

“After that visit, I asked him not to come back,” Richards said. “We lived in the Bronx, and he had to take a bus, then a train, then another bus, just to get to the Island and go through the lengthy process of reaching one of the visit spaces in the jails.

“It took him an entire day for a one-hour visit,” he added. 

Supporters of the new jails note that they will make it easier for family and friends to visit. The new facilities are all closer to criminal courthouses. 

Currently, detainees are woken up as early as 4 a.m. and hauled to courts throughout the city. The process, known as Bullpen Therapy after the courthouse holding pens, is used by prosecutors to force defendants to plead guilty or accept inferior plea deals, criminal justice advocates say. 

The Brooklyn lockup is expected to be the first of the new jails completed, according to city officials. 

In January, construction began for the new jail in Chinatown, a project expected to take six years. The 1,040-bed jail on White Street, the final piece of the Rikers closing plan, is expected to cost $3.9 billion and to be completed in 2032.

Chinatown activists and community leaders have fought the project at every turn, from protests and lawsuits to direct appeals to City Hall, pressing their case to multiple mayors, including Mamdani.

The three unions representing city jail officers and supervisors have also long opposed the plan. They say it would be easier and cheaper to simply build new facilities on Rikers. 

Backers of the shutdown plan say the new borough facilities will redefine how people accused of crimes are cared for and treated. 

“The design principles that we are using, speak life into anybody who comes into the facility,” Richards said, “with community space, with social service space, with textures and paintings and colors and operational efficiencies that would allow the department to manage whoever comes into our care for generations.”

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Mamdani’s New ‘Rikers Czar’ Helped Design Plan to Close Jail Complex appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

During a sometimes confrontational hearing Monday, City Council members questioned the independence of Nadia Shihata, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s nominee for Department of Investigation commissioner, citing her longtime friendship with a top Mamdani aide and $700 in donations she made to the mayor’s campaign.

Shihata insisted she would remain unbiased if she’s confirmed to run the anti-corruption watchdog, vowing to act “without fear or favor.”

Multiple council members grilled the former federal prosecutor during a rules committee hearing on what they saw as a potential conflict of interest. Of key concern was her relationship with Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem.

The investigations department has a key oversight function. Under Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, the department contributed to probes that led to criminal charges against Adams, his chief advisor, his buildings commissioner and the official in charge of city leases. 

On Monday, council members repeatedly pressed Shihata on the question of her independence from Mamdani and his chief counsel.  

Councilmember Shaun Abreu, D-Upper Manhattan, said that in the questionnaire she submitted to the council, Shihata had revealed that Kassem had asked her to apply for the DOI slot. She called that a “mischaracterization.”

Shihata acknowledged that she’d met Kassem years ago after law school, had socialized with him on occasion, and solicited his advice when she left the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office in 2022 to form her own law firm.

But Shihata sought to minimize these connections, insisting that Kassem had not encouraged her to apply for the job but contacted her to merely ask her if she “might be interested.” And while she acknowledged they “have kept in touch over the years, kept in touch periodically,” she noted, “It has not been a close friendship.”

When Abreu asked Shihata what she would do if Kassem became the target of a DOI probe on her watch and if she would voluntarily remove herself from the investigation, she said, “Under the circumstances, that’s likely,” adding she would ultimately follow the recusal advice of DOI’s general counsel.

Councilmember Nantasha Williams, D-Southeast Queens, zeroed in on Shihata’s four donations to Mamdani’s campaign – a total of $700 over several months. Shihata admitted that while she’d made donations in the past to federal candidates, she’d never contributed to any other municipal campaign. She admitted she had canvassed for Mamdani “for a couple of hours” on one evening during the mayoral campaign.

Shihata says she’ll watch Mamdani ‘without fear or favor’

Noting her “repeated” donations to the mayor, the canvassing activity and the fact that Mamdani was the sole beneficiary of her local political largesse, Williams asked if Shihata would say she’d “demonstrated a uniquely enthusiastic level of support for this mayor?”

Shihata countered by saying: “I’ve donated throughout my life to various political campaigns but most importantly, as a former federal prosecutor I understand very well the difference between my support for a campaign as a private citizen and my roles as a public servant tasked with making independent investigative decisions based on the facts and the law without fear or favor.”

“Throughout my career I have maintained the highest level of integrity and I will continue to do that as DOI commissioner,” she said.

Though the DOI commissioner is nominated by the mayor, the agency has long been considered independent of the mayor’s office. The previous commissioner, Jocelyn Strauber, was so independent she co-led a sprawling investigation with the FBI that resulted in the indictment of the man who nominated her for the job, Eric Adams.

And Shihata’s donations to Mamdani are unusual but not unique: Mayor Bill de Blasio’s first DOI commissioner, Mark Peters, served as de Blasio’s campaign treasurer when he ran for mayor. Council members hammered him relentlessly on this during Peters’ 2014 confirmation hearing, but ultimately approved his appointment.

“The Mayor was proud to nominate Nadia Shihata for DOI Commissioner because of her demonstrated integrity, her extensive experience as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, and her track record of rooting out corruption throughout her career,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said in a statement.

A confirmation vote on Shihata is expected in the next two weeks.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post She Gave Money to Mamdani. Can Nadia Shihata Investigate His City Hall? appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

In the months before his pal Eric Adams became mayor and made him chief of staff, Brooklyn attorney Frank Carone was hustling to build up a company he’d created to provide cash advances to doctors awaiting potentially lucrative insurance payouts in no-fault car accident cases.

Carone’s firm relied on a team of recruiters to find doctors who might sign up. Those on board included his longtime friend,  Zhan “Johnny” Petrosyants, and two of Petrosyants’ associates, Vladislav “Vlad” Stoyanovsky and Dmitriy “Dimi” Khavko.

By the end of last week, all three of those team members had been indicted on charges of running a massive no-fault insurance fraud ring that relied on a finance company that Carone’s lawyers on Friday confirmed is Carone’s firm, Finance Vision Capital Group II.

Carone, a top city power broker who has not been charged with wrongdoing, declined repeated requests by THE CITY to comment on the three accused fraudsters, but in the past he has said that once he went into City Hall in 2022 he had no involvement with Finance Vision Capital.

“As Frank and Finance Vision have long maintained, they are victims of this fraud, which cost them millions of dollars,” Carone’s lawyers, Russell Capone and Andrew Goldstein, said in a statement. “Indeed, as the indictment makes clear, funds from Financial Vision often did not reach the doctors they were intended for but were instead stolen.”

The indictments of Petrosyants, Stoyanovsky and Khakov were the latest charges filed against members of the former mayor’s professional and social circles. 

The toll from federal and state prosecutors includes Adams’ former chief advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin; Jesse Hamilton, a longtime associate; and former Buildings Commissioner Eric Ulrich. Adams’ schools chancellor, a deputy mayor and a police commissioner all resigned after their phones were seized by federal investigators.

In September 2024, Adams himself was charged with corruption, only for the Trump administration to later dismiss the indictment.

While Carone’s lawyers portrayed the powerful lobbyist as a victim in the alleged no-fault scheme, insurance giant GEICO last year sued Finance Vision in Brooklyn federal court, accusing the firm of “aiding and abetting” a massive fraud ring that submitted tens of thousands of bogus insurance claims for car accident victims for health care services that never occurred or had zero medical benefit. GEICO named Stoyanovsky and Khavko as defendants and sought to question Petrosyants.

The accusations in the civil lawsuit mirror the allegations outlined in the indictment unsealed last week against Petrosyants, Stoyanovsky and Khavko by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton.

Prosecutors allege that the trio set up a system where they used the signatures of licensed doctors to generate tens of millions of dollars worth of bogus claims. They relied on a finance firm that prosecutors didn’t identify to provide doctors and clinics with cash advances.

The firm would then collect the full amount of the payouts from insurers, plus fees. Some of the cash advances were paid to shell corporations that were clearly not medical clinics, including one called Blue Tech Supplies, the indictment alleged.

That finance firm was Finance Vision Capital Group.

In the civil suit, GEICO’s lawyers described what they said was Finance Vision’s  “knowing participation in the fraudulent scheme.” They noted the company had no direct contact with one doctor whose signature was used to justify medical claims submitted to GEICO and other insurers. Instead, the suit alleges, Finance Vision would award cash advances to shell companies and fake clinics set up by the ring that were not licensed to perform health care.

Abrams Fensterman, the politically connected law firm where Carone was a partner, handled all of Finance Vision’s collections from insurers, documents filed in another lawsuit show.

“Finance Vision knew that the funding arrangements between FV and the (doctor’s clinic) were a sham and were solely a means to create the appearance that there were legitimate financing or factoring agreements associated with the accounts,” GEICO alleged. “The true purpose was to pay the (ring leaders) up front.”

Finance Vision “submitted fraudulent bills generated with fabricated documents to GEICO and other insurers falsely claiming that the fraudulent services were (allegedly) performed by the doctor and his clinic,” GEICO alleged.

Emails filed in the GEICO case and another lawsuit reveal multiple direct contacts between Carone or his firm and all three defendants in the federal indictment: Petrosayyants, Stoyanovsky and Khavko. 

In one March 2021 email, Finance Vision advises Stoyanovsky and Khavko “that funding was issued for among others three batches of claims associated with” a doctor’s clinic. Other emails between Carone and the three defendants discuss obtaining more payouts from insurers and recruiting doctors to sign up for Finance Vision’s cash advances.

Another March 2021 email to Petrosyants indicates Carone was aware of potentially inflated claims. He notes that a medical provider appeared to be seeking insurance payouts for procedures “that are not justified by their medical records.”

As the alleged fraud ring began to attract the notice of GEICO and other insurers, Carone’s firm filed a lawsuit in Nassau County that portrayed Finance Vision as a victim.

The lawsuit claimed Daniel Kandhorov, another close friend of former Mayor Adams, had connected the firm to Petrosyants and other fraudsters and that the firm was unaware of their fraudulent activity. It mentioned that Carone’s pal, Petrosyants, had pleaded guilty to fraud charges related to a no-fault insurance scheme in 2014.

The suit also named as a defendant Peka Group, a company once owned by Petrosyants and his twin brother, Robert, to recover money the firm lost in the course of the alleged scheme. That case is pending.

The GEICO lawsuit was settled last fall by all parties, including Carone’s firm, for an undisclosed amount.. Reached Thursday by THE CITY, the insurer’s lawyer, Barry Levy of Rivkin Radler, declined to comment.

Khavko’s attorney, Roger Stavis, and Stoyanovsky’s lawyer, James Kousouros, declined to comment. As of Friday, the court had no record of who is representing Petrosyants.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Eric Adams Power Broker Says He’s the Victim in Multi-Million Insurance Scam appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

A longtime pal of ex-Mayor Eric Adams who ran one of the nightlife mayor’s favorite haunts was indicted Wednesday in an alleged scheme to submit tens of millions of dollars of bogus no-fault car insurance claims.

Zhan “Johnny” Petrosyants, 44, was taken into custody late Tuesday and was set to be presented in court Wednesday. He and his twin brother, Robert, ran Osteria la Baia, a Manhattan hotspot where the former mayor spent many a night.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton alleged Petrosyants was involved in a fraud ring that submitted millions of fraudulent auto insurance claims between 2018 and 2023, creating no-fault medical clinics that were controlled by non-licensed individuals and submitting bills for services that were never rendered or were medically unnecessary.

Clinics that handle no-fault claims often rely on funding companies that provide cash advances based on pending litigation. The companies then pocket the full value of the claims when they eventually settle. Prosecutors say Petrosyants funneled thousands of bogus claims through a funding company with the help of an unnamed co-conspirator.

In a pending civil lawsuit, the insurance giant Geico has alleged a funding company set up by attorney Frank Carone, Adams’ former chief of staff and a major city lobbyist, had “knowingly aided and abetted” a longrunning scheme to submit bogus claims that Petrosyants was involved in.

Late Wednesday, Carone — who has not been charged with wrongdoing — declined to comment on Petrosyants’ indictment. THE CITY was unable to determine who is representing Petrosyants as of late Wednesday.

This was Petrosyants’ second go-round with federal prosecutors. In 2014 he pleaded guilty to participating in a check cashing scheme and was sentenced to five years of probation.

Petrosyants is just the latest of Adams’ associates to find himself entangled in the criminal justice system.

Adams’ former chief advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, has been indicted twice on corruption charges. One of his longtime associates, Jesse Hamilton, is a co-defendant with Lewis-Martin on one of her cases. And his buildings commissioner, Eric Ulrich, also faces charges of pocketing bribes in exchange for helping out individuals seeking favors from City Hall. 

Several top advisors, including his schools chancellor, a deputy mayor and one of his police commissioners, had to resign after their phones were seized by federal investigators in an ongoing corruption probe.

Adams’ political fundraising has also attracted the attention of federal prosecutors. In September 2024, the then-mayor was indicted in a wide-ranging campaign finance scheme that involved soliciting and accepting illegal straw donations, including some arranged by associates of the Turkish government.

One of his senior aides, Mohamed Bahi, later pleaded guilty to arranging illegal straw donations for the mayor but Adams managed to escape reckoning weeks before his trial was to begin. The Trump Justice Department intervened and dropped the charges against Adams in exchange for his assistance in the administration’s immigration deportation initiative.

Late Wednesday Todd Shapiro, a spokesperson for Adams, did not respond to THE CITY’s request for the former mayor’s comment on the charges filed against his longtime friend.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Feds Indict Another Eric Adams Pal, This One for Insurance Fraud appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

New York City’s law department asked the State Supreme Court to let the city stop representing former Mayor Eric Adams in a 2024 civil lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault.

“Based on my review of new evidence since the original decision to represent him was made, I have determined that he is not entitled to representation by the city in this matter,” Steve Banks, the city’s Corporation Counsel, said in a statement. 

It’s not immediately clear what the new information is. 

Adams was accused by a former colleague, Lorna Beach-Mathura, of pressuring her in 1993 to perform oral sex in a car after she sought career advice, according to the complaint. Adams then grabbed her hand and placed it on his erect penis, and when she refused, he masturbated in front of her, she alleged. 

Former Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix, an Adams appointee, had said that the law department was obligated to represent him in the case because the alleged incident took place while he was employed by the NYPD transit bureau.

But the General Municipal Law requires the city only to represent employees accused of acts performed during the discharge of their official duties that did not violate the rules and regulations of the agencies they work for — giving the Corporation Counsel latitude to determine which employees the city chooses to represent.

A spokesperson for Adams, Todd Shapiro, said in a statement that the former mayor “has been proven innocent before and remains confident that the facts will ultimately prevail.”

It’s the latest sexual assault or harassment case filed against Adams allies to have the city-funded representation dropped under the Mamdani administration. 

Last week, the Law Department also dropped former senior advisor Timothy Pearson and former NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey in their cases alleging repeated sexual misconduct at work.

As of this week, taxpayers have paid more than $761,000 to the law firm of Wilson Elser to represent Pearson. Total public payouts to lawyers representing Adams and Maddrey were not immediately available.

The issue of the taxpayers paying the legal bills of Pearson and Maddrey came up during a confirmation hearing by the City Council for Banks. 

Council Speaker Julie Menin celebrated the move saying in a statement last week “New Yorkers should not be footing the bill for legal defenses tied to allegations of workplace misconduct.”

A spokesperson for the law department said he wasn’t aware of any other cases where Banks is pulling city-funded representation.

The attorney representing Roxanne Ludemann, the former NYPD officer who filed suit accusing Pearson of sexual harassment and retaliation when she complained to the department about his behavior, on Tuesday filed a motion seeking a judgment against the city and the Economic Development Corp. (EDC), the quasi-city agency that employed Pearson.

The loss of city-funded lawyers could be problematic for Adams, who still has unpaid legal fees from his since-dropped federal corruption case.

His legal defense fund has raised $1.8 million, but his legal expenses have grown to around $6.2 million, public filings show.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Citing New Evidence, Top City Lawyer Seeks to Drop Adams Defense in Sexual Assault Lawsuit appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

The former head of the NYPD’s School Safety Division solicited and accepted bribes from the CEO of a Florida-based tech company in a bid to snag a multi-million deal to put his panic button software in New York City’s public schools, federal prosecutors charged Thursday.

The former NYPD chief, Kevin Taylor, and the executive, Geno Roefaro of Saferwatch, were both arrested and charged with bribery. 

Starting in July 2023, Roefaro plied Taylor with $70,000 in cash and vacations for him and an unnamed female paramour to the Bahamas and Las Vegas, the indictment alleges. The Vegas bribe included tickets to a helicopter tour and a “medieval-themed dinner theater,” the indictment says.

The alleged bribes were part of a broader scheme by Saferwatch to snag a major city contract that also involved three brothers: ex-Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks, III, ex-Schools Chancellor David Banks (both appointees of former Mayor Eric Adams) and Terence Banks.

As part of this campaign, Saferwatch hired a consultant firm Terence set up, enabling it to set up meetings with both of his brothers, Philip and David, as first reported by THE CITY.

That CITY article caused Taylor to worry that his behind-the-scenes effort to transform a pilot program he had set up for Saferwatch into an $11 million contract would be exposed, prosecutors revealed in their 29-page indictment.

The case brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton alleges that Taylor “on multiple occasions” boasted to vendors seeking contracts about his close ties to Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Banks. Records show Taylor met with Philip Banks about the “panic button.”

The indictment says Saferwatch began its campaign to win a big New York City contract in the summer of 2022, the first year of the Adams administration. 

The company first hired former City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who met with David Banks in December 2022 and then with Philip Banks and his chief of staff in January 2023, pitching the firm’s product. 

But at some point, Saferwatch also hired Terence Banks’ firm, and Philip Banks later confirmed he’d spoken with his brother about the firm.

According to records reviewed by THE CITY, Philip Banks met with Taylor a few days after the pitch by Johnson. In September, Taylor arranged a no-bid purchase order of $19,000 to start a pilot program at five schools. That November, Taylor testified to the City Council that he planned to roll the panic button out citywide.

In between, prosecutors say, Roefaro began handing Taylor wads of cash, starting with $20,000, then $15,000, then another $35,000, while Taylor began recommending to his superiors that the NYPD award Saferwatch the $11 million contract.

The CEO also allegedly funded the Vegas vacation that September that included air fare, a luxury hotel room, a helicopter tour of the city and a night of retro fun at a “medieval-themed dinner theater.” That was followed in November by a trip to the Bahamas, the indictment alleges.

By that December, however, Roefaro began to complain that all of his payments to Taylor weren’t turning into an actual contract. Using the encrypted Signal app, he texted Taylor, “I’ve got nothing from you brother and I’m already in for hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Taylor responded, “You got nothing from me? You can’t play with the big boys and piss like a puppy.” (Prosecutors say they were able to recover some Signal conversations because the participants screen-grabbed and saved them.)

With the end of 2023 approaching, Roefaro’s tone darkened dramatically. In a Dec. 22, 2023 text to Taylor, he wrote, “It’s been fun but it’s not fun or funny anymore.” Demanding results by end of year, he stated, “If not I’m fucked and you don’t want me to be fucked. I’m both your whore and your sugar daddy all in one. I need you to take this seriously.”

Taylor got as far as arranging a mid-January 2024 press conference with Department of Education officials to announce a deal with Saferwatch, but at the last minute, the event was cancelled. Saferwatch didn’t get any contracts, and Taylor was removed from his role as commanding officer of the School Safety Division a few weeks later, demoted to a lesser role within the NYPD.

That Sept. 4, the FBI and city Department of Investigation seized the cell phones of several top officials in the Adams administration, including Philip and David Banks, as well as electronic devices from Terence Banks, as first reported by THE CITY. Saferwatch received a subpoena at the same time.

Five days later, when THE CITY published a story describing Saferwatch’s hiring of Terence Banks and meeting with his brothers, Taylor texted a link of the story to an unidentified individual expressing concern that Saferwatch’s CEO “could incriminate Taylor if approached by law enforcement.”

The unidentified individual agreed.

Taylor’s attorney, Richard Langone, and Roefaro’s lawyer, Danya Perry, did not respond to THE CITY’s requests for comment late Thursday.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Ex-NYPD Official Indicted for Accepting Bribes From Tech Exec in Scheme First Reported by THE CITY appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani nominated on Thursday former federal prosecutor Nadia Shihata to serve as the city’s top anti-corruption watchdog, leading the Department of Investigation.

Shihata, a top assistant U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of New York for more than a decade, led the team who brought down R&B singer R. Kelly on racketeering charges in 2021. 

During her tenure with the U.S. attorney’s office, she served mostly as first deputy chief and then chief of the organized crime and gang section, the division that brought an innovative case against Kelly over years of allegations that he’d sexually abused several women, in some cases minors.

The case, which received international attention due to the defendant’s fame, resulted in his conviction and a prison sentence of up to 360 months.

Shihata has appeared as a legal expert on TV news shows and has also used her social media handles to circulate her commentary. After a recent appearance on MS NOW, for example, she took to LinkedIn to post that the Trump Justice Department was not being completely forthcoming about selective redactions of names in the documents related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein:

“One point I forgot to mention on air the various privileges DOJ is using to withhold information are entirely waivable by the government suggesting yet again that #transparency is not the actual goal of the administration as they continuously claim.”

The Department of Investigation is focused on corruption by city employees and vendors, and Shihata has relatively little experience in that realm. She was assigned to the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s public integrity section to handle the prosecution of three federal Bureau of Prisons employees who were ultimately convicted of sexually assaulting female detainees at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn.

She quit the U.S. attorney’s office in September 2022, shortly after R. Kelly’s conviction to start a women-run boutique law firm, Shahita and Geddes, along with her co-prosecutor on the case, Elizabeth Geddes.

She appears to have made only four political donations during the 2025 mayoral campaign, all of which went to Mamdani and totaled $700, records show.

Under Mamdani’s predecessor, Eric Adams, DOI played a central role in investigating rampant corruption throughout his administration that ultimately resulted in the indictment of the mayor himself and several top advisors. Several of those investigations are ongoing.

On Thursday Mamdani promised those probes would continue unabated, stating that former DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber “did an extraordinary job” and promising that DOI was “going to build on” the prior efforts to root out corruption.

In her remarks, Shihata noted she is a naturalized citizen who was born in Egypt. If confirmed, Shihata would be the first woman of color to run DOI. 

Describing the law firm she formed in 2022, she said the firm specialized in representing victims of sexual harassment and “people being investigated by the government.”

Responding to a question about whether that could present a conflict of interest at DOI, she said her firm did not represent anyone under investigation by the agency, but added, “If something were to come up with that I’m not aware of at this time, I would follow the appropriate recusal advice.”

The firm has sued the NYPD, seeking records for a paroled inmate who claims he was wrongfully convicted of murdering a woman on the Lower East Side in the late 1990s. Her firm sought records to assist his claim of wrongful conviction, and ultimately got the NYPD to turn over much of the homicide file.

Her nomination must be confirmed by the City Council.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Mamdani Nominates Former Federal Prosecutor to Lead NYC Anti-Corruption Watchdog appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.

Former Mayor Eric Adams was fined $4,000 for an August 2025 press conference where he ordered City Hall staff to buy whistles to make a political opponent look bad.

The Aug. 22 press conference was held inside City Hall’s rotunda hours after his former aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin and other staffers were indicted on corruption charges — the second set of charges for Lewis-Martin, one of Adams’s closest advisors. When reporters arrived, there were whistles on each chair.

When Adams was asked about the whistles by a reporter, he confirmed his staff had placed them there. 

“Many of these women here are interviewing Andrew Cuomo, and they feel unsafe,” he said, likely referring to the sexual harassment findings that led to the former governor’s resignation in 2021. “They’re going to have a whistle to help them through it, okay?” 

Most of that day’s press conference, which Adams held with his first deputy mayor at the time, Randy Mastro, was about trust in the administration and his own re-election campaign. The former mayor denied he was dropping out, although he did so a month later. 

“I’m never going to quit on the City of New York. We’ve worked too hard to get here, and to those thousands of men and women who serve this city every day, I want to tell them thank you,” he said.

Almost two months after he reversed himself and exited the race, and a month after calling Cuomo “a snake and a liar,” Adams endorsed him. Weeks later, Cuomo nonetheless lost the general election to Zohran Mamdani.

In the Conflicts of Interest Board ruling released Monday, Adams acknowledged that he violated a portion of the City Charter restricting outside work on city time by asking a staffer to buy and distribute the whistles at a press conference “for the purpose of drawing negative attention to an opponent in my reelection campaign.”

It’s unclear which staffers purchased the whistles, or how much they cost.

“The issue involved routine event preparation by staff and was never intended to support any political activity. There was no misuse of public funds for campaign purposes,” Todd Shapiro, a statement for Adams, said in a statement.

“Mayor Adams takes ethics and compliance seriously, has always held his administration to a high standard.”

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, declined to comment. 

COIB released two other rulings Monday indirectly related to the 2025 election, including one against Queens City Councilwoman Joann Ariola who was fined $2,000 for sharing a post about mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa with an official City Council seal. 
“Considering the low cost of the fine, it was decided that it was best to simply pay it rather than allow the argument to drag on unnecessarily,” she said in a statement.

Our nonprofit newsroom relies on donations from readers to sustain our local reporting and keep it free for all New Yorkers. Donate to THE CITY today.

The post Adams Fined for Using Taxpayer Money to Spotlight Cuomo Sexual Harassment Charges appeared first on THE CITY - NYC News.