Fake contractor in deep doo-doo

House of cards falls on builder
By DAVID SEIFMAN, NY Post

A Queens contractor filed 195 documents over eight years with the city Buildings Department using the name of an unwitting Las Vegas engineer to certify that his work had been done properly, The Post has learned.

Nor was this the first such deception by Tibor Csizmadia, 76. He was imprisoned for four months in 2000 for similarly misusing an architect's name.

The scope of the fraud is so great that 18 months into its audit, the department's only been able to examine 88 of the 195 job sites to ensure their safety.

Csizmadia vanished after confessing on July 22, 2008, according to a criminal complaint. An arrest warrant was issued last August. He could face 183 counts of forgery and falsifying business records.

A department staffer sensed something wrong in March 2008 after getting a routine application from engineer Hsu Lee, whose license had been inactive since January 2007.

Lee told authorities that he left New York in 2000 and had never heard of Csizmadia.