Eric Adams gave Eric Ulrich the 411 about the feds cracking down on his gambling ties

 NY Daily News

Former New York City Buildings Commissioner Eric Ulrich told investigators that Mayor Adams tipped him off to the possibility he could be reeled into an illegal gambling investigation — months before the Manhattan district attorney’s office executed a search warrant on Ulrich and its probe became public knowledge, two sources with knowledge of the matter told the Daily News.

“Watch your back and watch your phones,” Adams said to Ulrich, according to the two sources with knowledge of Ulrich’s interview with prosecutors at the Manhattan DA’s office in November.

In that interview, Ulrich told investigators he interpreted Adams’ reference to a friend with illegal gambling ties and the statement “watch your phones” as an indication that a probe was underway, sources said.

The revelation that Adams may have clued Ulrich into an investigation before it became public raises questions, including whether there’ll be fallout if Adams had prior knowledge of the situation, how he might have learned about it and why he might have shared that information with Ulrich.

Adams’ spokesman Fabien Levy said that “the mayor has not received any requests from the Manhattan DA surrounding this matter and has never spoken to Mr. Ulrich about this investigation, either before or after the matter became public.”

“Not only did the mayor not know anything of the investigation before news of it broke last fall, but it makes no sense for anyone to learn about or even suspect a criminal investigation into a particular person and then decide to promote that same person,” Levy said.

There is no indication Adams is a target of the probe.

News about the probe into Ulrich broke last November, seven months after Adams tapped him to become buildings commissioner. Two days after the probe became public, Ulrich resigned amid allegations he was involved in illegal gambling.

More recently, sources revealed that a grand jury is considering charges against Ulrich and that an indictment could come before summer’s end, as first reported by The News.

According to the two sources, who agreed to speak with The News under the condition of anonymity due to the DA’s probe, Ulrich told investigators that Adams revealed the possibility of an investigation during a conversation in May 2022, just days after Adams announced Ulrich’s appointment as head of the Department of Buildings.

Before taking on the commissioner post, Ulrich, a Republican, served as a senior adviser to Adams, who’s a Democrat. During Adams’ run for mayor in 2021, while Ulrich was a City Councilman representing Queens, he backed the mayor and was instrumental in raising money for his campaign.

In early May 2022, days after the announcement that Ulrich would serve as buildings commissioner, he and Adams appeared at an event in the Bronx. After it ended, Adams pulled Ulrich aside and asked him to hand over his phone to a member of Adams’ NYPD security detail, according to the sources’ recounting of what Ulrich told investigators. The sources didn’t specify who that officer was. Which event the two attended together also isn’t entirely clear, but a review of the mayor’s public schedule shows both attended a Department of Buildings Construction Safety Week event on Friday, May 6.

After Ulrich handed over his phone, he and Adams walked away from the cop, and then, according to the sources’ retelling, Adams told Ulrich that “a little birdie” told him a friend of Ulrich’s was involved in illegal gambling and that Ulrich should “watch your back and watch your phones,” a message both sources took as a reference to a potential wiretap.

According to the sources, Ulrich recounted this exchange to Manhattan D.A. investigators on Nov. 2, a day after the search warrant had been executed.

Levy denied that Adams told Ulrich to leave his phone with anyone during any conversation between the two

 

MTA coming up short on funding the subway from low ridership, but will devote 10 years to make cellphone service accessible in the tunnels.

 

 NY Daily News

 The MTA needs billions in new funding by 2025 to avoid dire cuts to mass transit service in and around New York City, agency officials said Monday.

Before the pandemic, rider fares and driver tolls covered about 40% of the agency’s roughly $18 billion in annual operating expenses. But new ridership projections show that model is no longer sustainable.

New projections now show that the MTA faces a $2.5 billion funding shortfall come 2025, giving lawmakers precious little time to find new funding sources to prevent service cuts and layoffs that would hamper New Yorkers’ ability to move in and around the city.

“The new dedicated funding is necessary to avoid what we’re all trying to avoid,” said Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chief Financial Officer Kevin Willens. “Large fare increases, service cuts and layoffs.”

The MTA previously estimated ridership on the the agency’s subways, buses and railroads would reach 77% of prepandemic levels in 2022, bumping up to 86% in 2023. But the spread of the omicron variant over the winter halted many companies’ plans to return to in-person work, tanking those estimates.

The MTA now projects just 61% of those riders will be back on trains and buses this year — with just 69% of them returning in 2023.

 Transit officials on Monday did not lay out what new funding sources they seek, but said planned fare hikes for 2023 and 2025 wouldn’t be enough to cover the shortfall.

CBS New York 

Cell service is coming to New York City's subway tunnels. 

On Monday, MTA CEO Janno Lieber told CBS2 the agency is rolling out a 10-year plan to install equipment that will let riders use cellphones in all underground tunnels. 

Lieber said the $1 billion investment also includes installing Wi-Fi service at all above-ground stations. 

Transit Wireless CEO Melinda White said in a statement, "Expansion of the riders' connectivity through the tunnels and across the above ground stations shows the MTA's ongoing commitment to the rider experience."

The upgrade comes as the MTA is strapped for cash. The agency is moving what it calls its "fiscal cliff" up one year sooner, since outside projections of ridership returns fell short. 

The MTA is turning to the federal government for more money, saying the pandemic relief funding will now run out in 2024. 

The agency says a full return to ridership may not come until 2035 or later. No doubt, officials hope advancements, like adding Wi-Fi, get more people underground sooner.

Crane operator suspected of causing a death while distracted on his cellphone

 

NY Daily News

A crane operator fined $10,000 for using his cellphone while hoisting steel on a Bronx job site is also under investigation for his role in the death of a Manhattan construction worker in 2019, the Daily News has learned.

Michael Chichester was fined the $10,000 in January for the Bronx violation — as investigators continue to examine his role in the gruesome death of hardhat Gregory Echeverria during the construction of a luxury building at 570 Broome St. in SoHo on April 13, 2019.

 “Mr. Chichester was one of the parties involved in the 2019 fatal crane incident,” Buildings Department spokesman Andrew Rudansky said Tuesday. “That incident is still under investigation by the Department of Buildings and our partners in law enforcement. Further enforcement actions related to that incident are pending the conclusion of that joint investigation.”

Sources familiar with the probe say Chichester was fiddling with his phone the day that Echeverria, 34, died.

When reached by The News Tuesday, Chichester initially denied being himself, referring to himself in the third person instead. “What kind of story do you think you’re doing?” he asked.

“It was a tragic accident,” he eventually said of the SoHo death before hanging up. “I went through all the investigation. I’m a crane operator. I’ve been a crane operator for a long time. If I look away it’s on me, but I follow my signal guy. A tragic accident happened. You’re making a mountain out a molehill.”

The tragic sequence that led to Echeverria’s death began as a team of workers were assembling a mobile crane to lift mechanical equipment to the the roof of the Broome St. job, officials said.

A second crane was lifting counterweights into place to stabilize the mobile crane. After putting one counterweight on the back of the crane using two of the three ropes attached to the hook, the crane operator, believed to be Chichester, lifted the ropes away from the weight.

But the third rope caught the lifting attachment - known as a lug - and ripped the counterweight off the crane and into the air. Counterweights can run from 8 to 16.5 tons each.

“The man was split in half,” a distraught co-worker told the Daily News at the time.

A preliminary investigation found that a failure to remove excess rope contributed to Echeverria’s death. Officials said the probe, which the city’s Department of Investigations is involved in, is examining whether others besides Chichester had a role in Echeverria’s death.

In August 2019, city officials suspended work at job sites where work was being done by United Crane and Rigging, a firm linked to the Broome St. death and to an incident on the FDR Drive where an overloaded crane toppled. The company was slapped with $11,000 in fines amid the pending probe.

One of those job sites was for an affordable luxury public housing building.