Charity with ties to shady pol investigated

From DNA Info:

City investigators have opened a probe into a Queens nonprofit that has ties to disgraced ex-state Sen. Shirley Huntley and other elected officials, sources said.

The city Department of Investigation began in May looking into the finances of the St. Albans nonprofit Clergy United for Community Empowerment and into its executive vice-president and CEO, the Rev. Ernestine Sanders, according to sources.

The nonprofit bills itself as providing health and mental health services to HIV individuals and their families.

The group, whose board members include influential clergy from Southeast Queens, also holds political sway and its endorsement is coveted by both candidates running for office and elected officials.

Councilman I. Daneek Miller, who represents St. Albans, directed $63,438 in discretionary funds to Clergy United in fiscal year 2016 to run domestic violence initiatives, records show. In all, the nonprofit received nearly $219,000 in discretionary funds from the City Council that year, records show.

Miller declined to comment on the investigation.

Huntley, when she was a state senator, also steered $75,000 in state funds to Clergy United between fiscal years 2007 and 2010, according to a Politico article in 2012.

Huntley pleaded guilty in 2013 to mail fraud charges for stealing $87,000 in taxpayer money that went to an educational nonprofit she founded. She served 10 months in federal prison.

Huntley owes big bucks to the state

From the Daily News:

Former state Sen. Shirley Huntley, who was released from prison last year after serving time for corruption, is in trouble again.

Huntley, a Queens Democrat, owes nearly $751 in unpaid income taxes from 2012 to the state, officials confirmed. A tax warrant was issued by the state in December seeking to collect the money.

Don't blame Schneiderman

From the Observer:

After yet another lawmaker from southeast Queens faced criminal charges from his office, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman denied today he is taking particular aim at the area.

Mr. Schneiderman, along with State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Northern District U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian, announced the indictment of Assemblyman William Scarborough this afternoon, making Mr. Scarborough the third southeast Queens pol to be arrested following an investigation from Mr. Schneiderman’s office. But Mr. Schneiderman, a Manhattanite, argued he treats all regions equally.

“We’ve brought dozens and dozens of cases and if you ask the people we’ve indicted in Niagara County or in St. Lawrence County or in Elmira or in any other part of the state, I don’t think they’ll tell you that we’re concentrating all our efforts on Queens,” Mr. Schneiderman, a Democrat, told the Observer at a press conference in his Manhattan office.

“We’ve pursued people, town clerks and town supervisors and their cronies all over the State of New York and we will continue to do so,” he added.

The optics of a white Manhattanite indicting black elected officials has set off some grumbling in southeast Queens political circles, even if Mr. Schneiderman has a perfect conviction record there. State Senator James Sanders, Ms. Huntley’s rival in that 2012 race and her successor, raised the possibility last year, with little direct evidence, that prosecutors were unfairly targeting black lawmakers.

Is it Schneiderman's fault that Shirley rolled over on all her friends, and that they all happen to be black?

Summarizing southeastern Queens corruption

From NY1:

State Senator Malcolm Smith starts his Saturday praying.

"God, let him go back into his elected official office," a preacher says.

Whether that will happen after next week's Democratic primary is unclear.

Smith faces a new bribery trial in January. The first one this summer ended abruptly in a mistrial.

"It has a profound impact on you. There is no question about it," Smith said. "I have never been involved with the law in any regard."

He is also staring down his toughest re-election fight yet, against a former City Councilman, Leroy Comrie.

Smith's indictment rattled the city's political world, but he is hardly the first elected official in southeast Queens to be slapped with handcuffs.

Former state Senator Shirley Huntley had the experience in 2012. Earlier this year, it was City Councilman Ruben Wills.

"I know because of where I come from and the color I am, it doesn't usually work like that with you guys, but I am presumed innocent," Wills said in May.

It's a familiar line.

"I always continue to tell people of my innocence, and the more information that comes out, the more they realize," Smith said.

It's also a familiar subject: federal investigations into politicians' pockets.

"All of us, whoever we are, once you get elected, you're a target, and I think we realize that we are targets," said Rep. Gregory Meeks of Queens.

It seems that focus is zeroed in on southeast Queens, with scandal after scandal slamming the same neighborhoods.

Wills wants new prosecutor

From Crains:

Queens Councilman Ruben Wills, who is facing fraud and larceny charges in connection with a nonprofit he founded, wants Attorney General Eric Schneiderman removed from the case in favor of a special prosecutor.

In a motion filed Tuesday, Mr. Wills’ attorney argues that Mr. Schneiderman is prejudiced against the councilman and that there is “evidence of political motivation and retribution of Eric Schneiderman toward Mr. Ruben Wills.”

Mr. Wills was charged in May by Mr. Schneiderman in connection with a nonprofit, New York 4 Life, founded by the councilman in 2006, four years before he won election to the council. Among a dozen counts, Mr. Wills was charged with scheming to defraud, grand larceny and falsifying business records, including allegedly falsifying documents involving the nonprofit and an $11,500 check.

In 2008, Mr. Wills received $33,000 for the charity in discretionary funding from Queens State Sen. Shirley Huntley, for whom Mr. Wills had served as chief of staff. Ms. Huntley herself was sentenced in a separate nonprofit corruption scandal in May 2013.

In the court papers, Mr. Wills’ attorney, Steve Zissou, argues that Mr. Wills was targeted by Mr. Schneiderman after Ms. Huntley had sought to provide evidence to the FBI against the attorney general himself. (In a 2013 court filing detailing useful evidence Ms. Huntley had provided to federal authorities, prosecutors did not mention any evidence from her against Mr. Schneiderman.)

Wills says he didn't do it

From NY1:

A Queens City Councilman who was indicted on a long list of corruption charges last month is launching a public campaign to try to clear his name. Ruben Wills sat down in an exclusive interview with NY1's Ruschell Boone to show her evidence he says helps his case.

City Councilman Ruben Wills is heard saying "I said my stuff is clean" on undercover video recorded in the summer of 2012. He's speaking with former State Senator Shirley Huntley, who taped several lawmakers before going to prison on corruption charges.

Wills is facing his own set of charges, and he says the tape bolsters his claims of innocence.

"I'm not just saying I'm innocent today. I've been saying I was innocent in 2011, 2012 when the tape was happening," Wills said.

A spokesperson for the attorney general wouldn't comment about the video or this story so we don't know if there's more footage that we haven't seen or what the other evidence is.
Wills, who sat down with us without his attorney, said his legal team received the video from the State Attorney General's office after more than a year of asking for it.

Shirley sprung from the joint and tweeders party

From the Times Ledger:

The Rev. Charles Norris Sr. and Clergy United for Community Empowerment welcomed former state Sen. Shirley Huntley back from prison with a party Tuesday.

Norris said close to 75 people gathered to greet Huntley, who represented Jamaica, Springfield Gardens and St. Albans in Albany, including representatives from U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks’ (D-Jamaica) office and state Assemblyman William Scarborough’s (D-St. Albans) office.

The homecoming bash was held at the Robert Ross Johnson Family Life Center.

“It was very well-attended,” Norris said of the event organized by CUCE, a coalition dedicated to empowering African Americans, where the minister serves as executive secretary. “She’s home and that’s good.”

Norris said CUCE was very proud to organize the party and emphasized that Huntley had served her time.

“She doesn’t owe anybody anything,” he said.

Huntley was sentenced to 366 days in prison after pleading guilty to mail fraud in an effort to cover up a scheme she used to pocket more than $87,000 from taxpayers.

But the Federal Bureau of Prison website shows she was released after about 10 months.

Malcolm doesn't think he did anything wrong

From the NY Post:

Queens state Sen. Malcolm Smith wants to present a surprise witness to prove his innocence at his upcoming corruption trial — convicted ex-Queens Sen. Shirley Huntley, stunning new court papers filed Friday reveal.

Smith, who is claiming he was framed by the government, wants two secret conversations that Huntley recorded with him submitted as evidence to bolster his defense.

“These recorded conversations demonstrate that Smith had no predisposition to engage in any criminal conduct,” Smith attorney Gerald Shargel said.

“On these recordings, Huntley proposes various unlawful acts in which she hoped to ensnare Smith. Each time, Smith rejected her criminal overtures,” Shargel added.

From the Daily News:

Embattled state Sen. Malcolm Smith says there’s nothing wrong with having politicians on the “payroll.”

In papers filed in Manhattan Federal Court on Friday, Smith said there was nothing unusual or criminal about his comments, caught on an FBI wiretap, that he helped himself get to a leadership position in 2008 by spreading cash around to his Democratic colleagues.

The feds shouldn’t be allowed to use that against him because it’s not illegal, Smith’s papers say.

Which of Shirley's pals will be next?

From the NY Post:

Disgraced former state Sen. Shirley Huntley is days away from freedom, but the fate of nine people she caught on a federal wire still hangs in the balance.

Huntley is due to be released from a federal halfway house on May 31 after completing 10 months of her one-year sentence in a corruption case. She pleaded guilty last year to stealing $87,700 in taxpayer money from her nonprofit — cash she spent on shopping sprees with Assemblywoman Vivian Cook.

To save herself, Huntley agreed to secretly record fellow politicians and two political operatives at her Queens home, where she was recuperating from a broken ankle.

In June, July and August 2012, Huntley hosted fellow lawmakers in her den, catching them on recording devices hidden in a water bottle, a key chain and a cigarette case.

It was unclear why the feds focused on the nine guests, but at least four had links to the tainted bid by the Aqueduct Entertainment Group to build a racino at the Queens racetrack. The feds reportedly directed Huntley to ask them about Aqueduct.

With the arrest last week of one of the group, Rubin Wills, the “Huntley Nine” are asking: Who’s next?

Democratic political consultant busted

From The Politicker:

Melvin Lowe, a political consultant who worked with the State Senate Democrats, was arrested this morning on federal corruption charges.

Mr. Lowe is facing a nine-count criminal complaint in federal court alleging his participation in five separate illegal schemes, according to a statement sent out by the U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara earlier this afternoon. In total, the complaint alleges Mr. Lowe filed a litany of false paperwork and failed to report more than $2 million in come in order to enrich himself.

Notably, Mr. Lowe was among nine individuals–mostly sitting state senators–that now-former State Senator Shirley Huntley recorded on wire while she was cooperating with authorities. Ms. Huntley is currently serving a year in prison for her own corruption scheme; the pols she wiretapped have professed their innocence.

Another head connected to Huntley rolls

From the Daily News:

The president of a Queens, N.Y., nonprofit with ties to former state Sen. Shirley Huntley was charged Tuesday with stealing more than $85,000 in taxpayer money.

Van Holmes, head of the Young Leaders Institute in Laurelton, pocketed the cash between March 2007 and September 2012 after creating dozens of bogus records claiming reimbursements for overnight youth trips that never happened and job mentor programs that didn't exist, authorities said. He allegedly used the money to buy clothes and theater tickets and to get work done on his car.

The stolen cash was allegedly directed to Holmes' charity by Huntley and other City Council members.

Huntley is headed to prison this month after pleading guilty to charges that she looted nonprofits she controlled.

Holmes, who surrendered Tuesday morning, was arraigned on charges of grand larceny and falsifying business records. He pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance.

If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in prison.

Shirley says entire Senate is corrupt

From the Daily News:

Huntley said she agreed to become an informant — spying on pols using James Bond-like gadgets like a video camera hidden in a water bottle — to protect her family from being prosecuted along with her. And to those who condemn her betrayal, she offers a middle finger.

“I could care less what the politicians think about me,” Huntley, 74, told the Daily News in an exclusive interview. “They know what I say is true because they live it every day. Albany is a mess. It’s all about money and power. I don’t think most of them give a tinker’s damn about their constituents.”

Huntley is indeed unabashed.

“If John (Sampson) and Malcolm (Smith) would talk, oh my God,” she said provocatively. “They flip him (Sampson) and you’ll need a special election to elect a whole new damn Senate.”

Shirley goes down swinging

From NY1:

Shirley Huntley would not speak to to reporters after her sentencing Thursday, but in court, she made a brief statement of apology, taking full responsibility for her actions.

Going outside of federal sentencing guidelines, which called for 18 to 24 months in prison, the judge sentenced Huntley to one year and one day and ordered her to repay the nearly $88,000 she admitted to stealing in a guilty plea, plus a $100 fine.

Despite her cooperation, the prosecutors declined to enter an agreement with Huntley because they found much of the information she provided to be "false, implausible and inconsistent."

In a passionate plea for leniency during the sentencing, Huntley's attorney told the judge that Huntley cooperated fully with the government and, as a result, the family has faced threats in their community. Huntley's husband told the judge that he was accosted this week outside a supermarket and warned that he would be "sorry" for his wife's cooperation.

Huntley's attorney went on to say that the former senator knew about a culture of corruption in Albany, and even claimed that bags of money were brought up in the state Senate elevators of the Capitol building.

The attorney said Huntley warned Governor Andrew Cuomo about pervasive corruption, and faced threats from current state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, whom she also accused of corruption.

And the turkeys are...

From DNA Info:

She used a bum foot to lure politicians into a federal wire trap.

Last summer ex-Sen. Shirley Huntley secretly recorded seven elected officials, a former aide and a political operative in her South Jamaica home, inviting them over under the ruse that an injured foot made it difficult to travel, according to sources and a court document.

The nine caught on tape are state senators Eric Adams, Ruth Hassell-Thompson, Jose Peralta, John Sampson, Malcolm Smith and Velmanette Montgomery; City Councilman Ruben Wills; Melvin Lowe, a former political consultant; and Curtis Taylor, an ex-Smith press adviser, the court paper shows.

Eight are now targets of criminal investigations, Brooklyn federal prosecutors have said, but none of them have been accused of any wrongdoing.

Wills said in a statement that investigators told him that he is not the subject of a probe.

The names were revealed in a sentencing memorandum connected to Huntley's criminal case that was unsealed Wednesday afternoon.

Huntley, 74, is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty in January to mail fraud for siphoning $87,000 from a sham nonprofit. In the run-up to her sentencing, her lawyer submitted the memorandum seeking leniency, citing Huntley's cooperation with FBI agents looking into public corruption.

The memorandum had been under seal, but a judge ruled Tuesday that it should be made public after news outlets, including DNAinfo New York, made the request.

The document details how after being busted, Huntley met with federal agents over a six-month period and told them that she knew of corruption involving elected officials.

Huntley agreed to record certain officials she invited to her modest two-bedroom South Jamaica home, where she lived with her husband, a retired guidance counselor.

She lured the targets over by claiming her broken foot kept her incapacitated, according to sources. She also suffers from sciatica and regularly takes cortisone injections to reduce inflammation in her spine, according to the memorandum.

"She said she had a broken foot but she was wired up the whole time," said the source. "Nobody thought anything of it because she's an old lady."

All nine were recorded and photographed by federal agents, according to the memorandum.

Place your bets...

Who will it be?

From the Times-Union:

Last week, prosecutors revealed in a pre-sentencing letter that Huntley wore a wire for several months in pursuit of a cooperation agreement with federal investigators, and in a separate Tuesday filing said their sentencing memo — which will detail the extent of her cooperation — contains the names of eight people under investigation. Six of those people are elected officials. One of the nine is not under investigation.

District Judge Jack Weinstein agreed with members of the courtroom press corps that the public's right to know outweighed the danger of compromising any ongoing investigations. He scheduled the unsealing of the memo for 2 p.m. Wednesday.

And the beat goes on...

From the NY Post:

Embattled state Sen. John Sampson of Brooklyn is set to turn himself in to authorities today after being ensnared in a bribery scandal involving former colleague-turned-rat Shirley Huntley, sources said.

Sampson told his aides over the weekend that he was preparing to surrender to the feds, reaching out to staffers to give them the news, the sources said.

The move comes after authorities last week revealed that wiretaps show an unnamed state senator — whom sources identified to The Post as Sampson — allegedly helped broker an illicit deal between Huntley and a cargo company at JFK Airport in March 2012.

As The Post revealed Saturday, the federal probe into allegedly crooked Queens and Brooklyn pols has already led to other investigations into Sampson and US Congressman Gregory Meeks (D-Queens).

According to sources, Sampson had approached Huntley — then a Democratic state senator from Queens — to intercede with the Port Authority to land the company more airport rental space. Huntley did — and netted a $1,000 bribe for her efforts, the feds said.

Shirley got the goods on other electeds

From the NY Times:

Soon after prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation revealed last month that a New York State assemblyman had been secretly making audio and video recordings for law enforcement, other legislators began nervously joking that they could never be sure who else was taping them.

Little did they know.

On Friday, prosecutors disclosed that Shirley L. Huntley, when she was a Democratic state senator from Queens, had secretly recorded conversations with seven elected officials and two other people after she was confronted by the F.B.I. and asked about her alleged participation in criminal schemes involving embezzlement and bribery.

The revelation that Ms. Huntley was taping conversations suggested a widening dragnet in Albany: the spectacle of two sitting lawmakers — one a senator, the other an assemblyman — independently recording conversations at the behest of federal authorities.

The undercover work of the assemblyman, Nelson L. Castro, a Bronx Democrat who cooperated to avoid prosecution for perjury, helped federal prosecutors in Manhattan with an investigation that led to charges against another Bronx Democrat, Assemblyman Eric A. Stevenson, for accepting bribes. On Friday, prosecutors said in court papers that Ms. Huntley’s recordings of a senator and two other elected officials “did yield evidence useful to law enforcement authorities.”

The senator was not identified in the court documents, but a person with knowledge of the matter said the senator was John L. Sampson, a Brooklyn Democrat and former Senate leader who has long been under investigation. Mr. Sampson has not been charged, and neither Mr. Sampson nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment.

You have to wonder why the others continue to talk to those under indictment.

Huntley in second guilty plea

From NY1:

Already awaiting sentencing on corruption charges, former Queens state senator Shirley Huntley admitted today she falsified documents to get state cash to a local non-profit group she founded.
It’s the former state legislator's second guilty plea in a month.

Huntley officially pleaded guilty to a felony count of tampering with physical evidence.

The charges were brought by State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.

Huntley said she doctored records to try to ensure a sham nonprofit received state money for so-called educational programs.

That funding allegedly went into the pockets of Huntley’s niece and her aide.

In January, the former senator also pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court.

She will be sentenced there in April.

Wills also in tweeding probe

From the NY Post:

Investigators are cranking up their criminal probe of Queens Councilman Ruben Wills following the conviction of his mentor, ex-state Sen. Shirley Huntley, in a mushrooming scandal involving the theft of taxpayer funds from nonprofit groups, The Post has learned.

Probers are refocusing on Wills, a former chief-of-staff to Huntley, after Huntley pleaded guilty in federal court Jan. 30 to embezzling $87,700 in taxpayer money from a nonprofit, the Parents Information Network, founded by her daughter.

Huntley is expected to plead guilty to felony evidence-tampering charges stemming from a separate state corruption case against her pending in Nassau County Supreme Court. Wills is being eyed by state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for failure to account for about $32,000 in state funding that Huntley steered to a separate nonprofit group he headed, New York 4 Life.

The probe of Wills will move from the back burner once the Huntley case is disposed of, insiders said.

What's Cooking?

From the NY Post:

New York state Assemblywoman Vivian Cook allegedly funneled thousands of dollars in public money to a corrupt fellow legislator — and was then rewarded with lavish shopping trips underwritten by taxpayer funds, The Post has learned.

Cook — a 75-year-old Queens Democrat first elected to the Assembly more than two decades ago — helped procure the government money for an organization run by former state Sen. Shirley Huntley, according to several sources.

Huntley, a fellow Queens Democrat, pleaded guilty earlier this week to charges linked to her embezzlement of nearly $90,000 in public money from that organization, known as the Parents Information Network (PIN).

When Huntley appeared in court, she spoke about how her murky arrangement with Cook guaranteed that a pipeline of tax dollars flowed to the nonprofit education charity, with the money later siphoned off to pay personal expenses.

“I have an agreement with a member of the New York state Assembly,” Huntley told a judge.

“This person ensured that state funds would be directed to PIN for what is known as ‘member items,’ ” Huntley explained. “Once PIN received the state funds, I alerted this person, and together we used PIN’s funds for personal shopping.”

Although her name was not mentioned in court, Cook has been identified as the state Assembly member who earmarked the tax dollars for Huntley’s private organization, according to several sources.

And it was Cook who joined Huntley on many of these private shopping excursions, which were financed with the embezzled government funds, according to several sources.