Friday, October 7, 2011

Bribery and extortion in the housing industry

From the Daily News:

A Brooklyn man was sentenced to seven to 21 years in prison Tuesday for posing as an inspector to extort tens of thousands of dollars from city construction sites.

Anthony Lewis, 42, was convicted of enterprise corruption this year for the ruse in which he and a co-defendant visited job sites in hardhats with "Committee on Contract Compliance" stenciled on them.

If their victims balked at handing over cash, the duo called in fake complaints to city agencies.


From the NY Times:

The official in charge of construction at the city agency that helps build moderately-priced housing — the largest municipal developer of such housing in the nation — was arrested early Thursday on federal racketeering conspiracy and bribery charges along with six developers, two of them lawyers, according to court papers.

The charges accuse the official, Wendell B. Walters, assistant commissioner for new construction for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, of transforming the agency into a racketeering enterprise along with one of the developers, Stevenson Dunn, officials said.

The indictment in the case charges that Mr. Walters took approximately $600,000 in bribes and kickbacks on about $22 million in moderately priced housing projects overseen by the housing preservation department in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn between 2002 and 2011, officials said.


Photo from NY Post.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Google "Steel Frame Construction" (gensteel, anthemsteel, buysuperstud). Buildings today are so much cheaper and can be machined by computer. The biggest cost is labor. Labor unions threaten to mess up your building if you don't make work for them.

Anonymous said...

No shit Sherlock...I'm shocked!