Saturday, July 18, 2015

Crooked housing inspector heading to the pokey

Jefferson Seigel/Daily News
From the Daily News:

A crooked city housing inspector was sentenced to up to 7 1/2 years in prison Thursday after being found guilty of taking cash bribes in return for the dismissal of code violations.

Luis Soto, 52, a former inspector with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), was sentenced to 2 1/2/ to 7 1/2 years in prison for accepting bribes of up to $2,500 per property to remove housing code violations, prosecutors said.

Soto, of Staten Island, and Oliver Ortiz, 51, received more than $41,000 in bribes in total, prosecutors said.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now get the rest of them.

Anonymously Grey Gardens said...

A crooked housing inspector was sentenced to up to 7.5 years---but, a crooked politician like Michael Grimm was only sentenced to serve eight months (and far less with good behavior!)!

Alas, political greed always wins out in a system that is rigged for anarchy, as it continue to reward monstrous failure---and the public be eternally damned!

What a horrid example of justice, then for today's children (and future generations) to witness---that truth and democracy are now at the mercy of a corrupt system that totally betrays any pretense of lawfulness! Unbelievably sad and tragic!

Anonymous said...

Good! Now we need a few of those shady land use guys at CB7 to wind up in the pokey too.

Anonymous said...

Throw away the key.

Anonymous said...

go to Queens County housing court.. the worst and most corrupt HPD inspectors work in the courthouse. How dare they do this to people looking to better conditions in NYC?

Anonymous said...

Yay!

Anonymous said...

Only 41K?


They work cheap.

Anonymous said...

Bravo! It looks like Richard Iritano has finally learned to be brief.
Thank you. Your message comes across much clearer that way.

Anonymous said...

don't worry some queens politicans will be next just wait and see --

Anonymous said...

Their ass is grass

Anonymous said...

Not that I support Grimm, but his crime was objectively less awful.

Anonymously Grey Gardens said...

Less awful crime, Anonymous? There is no such thing, and while everyone else was busy paying taxes and living with clean hands, this counterfeit, wannabe, big shot of marginal accomplishment was busy lying, cheating and stealing with impunity, just so his crummy East Side health store could turn a profit (dishonestly, I might add, and while exploiting immigrant employees, no less). For that alone, a minimum sentence of 8 years should be mandated as a deterrent, without early release, so that all other will think long and hard about their objectively less awful crimes.

In the end (as in the beginning), we all pay an irreparable (and irreversible) price for this kind of criminal misconduct, where it isn't even shocking any more that the crime was committed by yet another greedy, derelict public servant. I am sick to death of these double standards and flagrant abuses of authority, that devalue all honesty itself---and where if it happened to someone in the rank-and-file, it would be treated with an altogether different level of crime and punishment.

What and who is left to trust, then, when the people who make the laws are the biggest abusers that are always on the take?