BDB knew about the NYCHA mess for quite some time

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has known the city’s housing authority wasn’t complying with lead-inspection regulations since last year, his office said Sunday.

In a report issued last week, the city’s Department of Investigation said the New York City Housing Authority submitted false claims to the federal government showing it had conducted lead-paint inspections when the required work hadn’t been done for years.

The mayor was first informed of “the possibility of non-compliance” in March 2016, his office said.

Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat who was re-elected to a second term on Nov. 7, has said “operations executives” were responsible for the lapses.

The housing authority notified City Hall that the agency wasn’t in compliance with local laws in April 2016 and with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development rules in July, according to de Blasio spokeswoman Olivia Lapeyrolerie.

“As part of the agency’s response, NYCHA inspected every apartment with kids under 6 where there may have been lead paint in 2016 and will do so again by the end of 2017,” Ms. Lapeyrolerie said.

Meanwhile, all this is costing us taxpayers a ton of cash.

Expediter sanctioned by DOB

From Brownstoner:

Arguably the most famous expediter-engineer in the city, Scott Schnall, lost the right to file with the Department of Buildings in late February and now hundreds of projects in Brooklyn are in limbo.

An administrative court held a trial, found Schnall guilty of falsifying documents, and the DOB barred him from submitting filings to the department.

Department of Buildings v Schnall by queenscrapper on Scribd

The Brownstoner post has since been removed for an unknown reason.

City falsified lead testing records

From the Daily News:

City workers falsified records to claim day care centers had tested for lead in drinking water when no tests were actually performed, a city controller audit released Friday found.

Starting in 2008, the city was supposed to make sure all day care centers tested drinking water for lead. But Controller Scott Stringer's auditors found that by 2011, the city Department of Health & Mental Hygiene had dropped the ball.

DOHMH — the agency that's required to inspect all 11,000 child care centers in New York City annually — had more or less given up on the task.

"We have supervisors who told employees to falsify these tests and they never bothered for four years to go back and do the testing," Stringer said. "This is outrageous. Neglecting this lead test is a gamble on the health and safety of our kids."

At first, Stringer found, the city tried to enforce the lead test requirement. But by 2011, inspectors were finding the providers weren't keeping up with the testing requirement.

Soon DOHMH supervisors were instructing underlings to simply mark "tested" at sites that had not be tested. This allowed the city to renew or approve a new license for day care providers without actually testing for lead in drinking water at their sites.

Under pressure to keep child care centers open, the agency's bureau of child care management directed staff to claim that the agency had received lead water test results, regardless of whether such tests had been received.

Reporter murders Ridgewood history

I had the misfortune of watching this last night. Toni Senecal really needs new researchers because she got just about every fact about Ridgewood wrong.  You can watch the entire disaster here.

• Ridgewood was never part of Brooklyn. Yes, there is a section of Bushwick that locals refer to as "Ridgewood" but the Queens section has never, ever been located in Brooklyn.
• Note the way she pronounces "Arbitration Rock"...
• She visits 2 foodie locations that are just barely in Ridgewood and considers a third one to be Ridgewood although it's most definitely in Bushwick.
• The "English" did not "name it Ridgewood after the area's green and hilly terrain". The area was named after the Ridgewood Reservoir, which itself was named after its sourcewater in Massapequa.

How do you "tour" Ridgewood without hitting Myrtle Ave, Forest Ave or Fresh Pond Road?

If you want to do a Bushwick piece, do a Bushwick piece.

Someone please make these people stop.

Chronicle keeping tabs on the Trib

From the Queens Chronicle:

...we have to again take the Tribune to task for favoritism in its coverage of a race for public office, favoritism that likely has both politics and money behind it. Coincidentally, it’s again a race that involves Halloran, the winner of that 2009 contest and now a candidate for the Congressional seat that Rep. Gary Ackerman is giving up at the end of the year.

But this time it’s not Halloran the Tribune is showing bias against — at least not yet. Instead it’s Assemblyman Rory Lancman of Fresh Meadows and Councilwoman Elizabeth Crowley of Middle Village. They’re the two Democrats vying for the congressional nomination against the party’s choice, Assemblywoman Grace Meng of Flushing. Whoever wins the primary will then face GOP designee Halloran.

The Meng campaign just hired Multi-Media, the consulting firm the Tribune claims acts independently of the newspaper, even though it’s headed by the paper’s associate publisher, Michael Nussbaum.

So what does she get for hiring Multi-Media? Political advice, mailers and, just maybe, last week’s Tribune front page, which focused on Meng’s “making history” with her campaign (she’s Asian, you see), and relegated her competitors to inset-style photos.

We hope the Tribune — a storied newspaper that does also produce quality journalism —will play it straight this time around and be fair to all the candidates. We’ll be watching for this, since we read the Trib, and most of our competition, on a regular basis. And if we find the paper is showing favoritism again, we’ll report on it.

Revenge via false complaint

From Urbanite:

Hell hath no fury like a person using a public agency to torment a disliked relative or acquaintance.

Conscripting government workers to wage personal vendettas takes myriad forms: Women embittered by divorce settlements tell the IRS that an audit of their ex-husbands’ returns may prove fruitful.

Others make knowingly false allegations to law enforcement, or grouse to agencies mandated to investigate complaints.

While it’s impossible to determine how widespread the problem is, numbers from Administration for Children’s Services offer some hint of its potential scope. In 2009, no indication of abuse or neglect was found in 57.9 percent of the 59,249 investigations done by Administration for Children’s Services.

Most complaints are lodged by people with genuine concerns, said Michelle Conklin, a vice president of SSEU-Local 37, who worked as an ACS caseworker for 10 years. But phony reports are also called in by vindictive noncustodial parents and relatives, and by cranky neighbors seeking to punish parents whose children trespass or make noise, she said.

Agencies are in a Catch 22 when it comes to malicious complaints. “We really can’t not take things seriously. We’re required by law to investigate,” explained ACS spokesman Michael Fagan.

Falsely reporting an incident is a Class A misdemeanor, but neither Fagan nor the Manhattan DA could provide any numbers or information about people prosecuted for making false reports.

A spokesperson for NYC’s Independent Budget Office said no one had ever examined how much money was gobbled up investigating bogus complaints.

Let's not forget that this is also a valuable tool for elected officials to use against those who dare criticize them.

Now that's messed up!

From Eyewitness News:

Investigators have arrested three people accused in an elaborate scheme to frame an innocent Far Rockaway woman.

She was accused in May 2010 of impersonating a police officer and robbing victims at gunpoint, but it has turned out to be all a lie.

Within the last week, an informant told the Nassau County DA's office that Seemona Sumasar, 35, had been framed by an ex-boyfriend. Sumasar was being held in the Nassau jail for crimes that never took place, the informant claimed.

After the district attorney's office corroborated the informant's account, Sumasar was released from jail On Thursday.

District Attorney Kathleen Rice said that Jerry Ramrattan, 38, of East Elmhurst, promised to pay off two "witnesses" in Nassau County to lie to authorities that Sumasar, along with a male accomplice, had conducted a number of gunpoint robberies while Sumasar and the accomplice impersonated police officers.

Investigators then questioned each witness, who they say separately confessed that Ramrattan promised to pay them to report false incidents regarding Sumasar. Ramrattan coached the false witnesses to give police partial license plate numbers of cars Sumasar was known to drive and to identify her in a photo array.

The witnesses, Terrell Lovell and Luz Johnson were arrested on Wednesday and charged with perjury.

Cops pinched for phony bust

From the Daily News:

Two cops from Brooklyn's embattled 81st Precinct were charged Friday with making a trumped-up arrest - in a sting operation caught on video.

Like a couple of Keystone Kops, Sgt. Raymond Stukes and Officer Hector Tirado barged in on an Internal Affairs Bureau integrity test actually targeting another cop, sources said.

The undercover IAB officer, carrying a backpack filled with packs of cigarettes, was talking to the intended target when Stukes and Tirado showed up at the corner of Chauncey St. and Howard Ave. in Brownsville on Sept. 3.

Unaware that IAB was videotaping the action, Stukes and Tirado began questioning the undercover cop conducting the sting.

He told them the cigarettes had legitimate tax stamps, but they hauled him into stationhouse and ended up hitting him with bogus charges: that he tried to sell bootleg cigarettes to two people.

"The (arrest) paperwork was inconsistent with the events that took place on that date," said Assistant District Attorney Gregory Marshall at an arraignment in Brooklyn Supreme Court.

Stukes and Tirado pleaded not guilty to felony perjury charges and were released on their own recognizance. Their lawyers declined to comment.

Majority of NYPD summonses are tossed by court

Lazy lab tech may have botched thousands of drug cases

From the NY Post:

A technician in the NYPD's forensics lab has been suspended for allegedly falsifying drug-test results, throwing into question "maybe thousands" of criminal cases -- and prompting a panicked meeting yesterday between cops and the city district attorneys.

A Bronx drug trial was even abruptly halted last week because the longtime lab technician, Mariem Megalla, was supposed to testify in that case, sources told The Post.

The NYPD last week sent out an emergency e-mail to the city's five DAs warning them about the evidence disaster and telling them to examine pending felony case files for evidence tested by her. In all such cases, the NYPD wrote, the evidence will need to be retested to make sure the results are accurate.

Police brass also huddled with DA reps yesterday to discuss how to handle the problem.

"It could potentially be hundreds and maybe thousands of cases that need to be looked at because of how long she's been in the department," a source said, citing pending and closed cases.

Megalla, 57, is accused in one case of falsely labeling a sample of suspected drugs as positive for cocaine after it actually tested negative -- because she allegedly didn't want to walk to another part of the building and fill out paperwork to have it tested further, the sources said.

Both alleged incidents were uncovered by NYPD quality-control staffers after Megalla performed the initial tests in late April in the department's drug lab in Jamaica, Queens.

The lab has been plagued by testing scandals in recent years.

The 24-year civilian NYPD veteran now faces probes by the department and the Queens District Attorney's Office.

Megalla was suspended without pay Friday, the day she was to testify in the Bronx drug trial.

Environmental inspector pleads guilty

From Fox 5:

NEW YORK - An ailing environmental threat assessor has pleaded guilty to filing false reports that masked potential lead paint and asbestos hazards in New York City buildings.

Saverio Todaro entered the plea Friday in federal court in Manhattan.

The 68-year-old Todaro admitted his private inspection business submitted fictitious reports to federal and city officials between 2005 and 2008. The reports said several buildings were safe to occupy.

He said he sometimes never submitted dust samples to a lab. Other times, the inspections weren't even performed.

Todaro appeared in court with an oxygen tank and a walker. His wife says he suffers from emphysema.

He is free on $250,000 bond. He faces up to five years in prison.

No sentencing date was set.

Park Slope plagued by phony 311 complaints

From IMBY:

Six South Park Slope property owners received no less than 27 complaints over a three day period in February. Remarkably, this is not the first time these neighbors have been tormented by 311 complaints. Back in July of 2009, eleven anonymous complaints were filed against them claiming they all had illegal conversions of some form or another. When these neighbors are not fighting off DOB inspectors they have been dealing with having their automobile's tires slashed, and their properties damaged on a regular ongoing basis. A quick check of other properties on the block show no similar instances of multiple complaints.

Building inspectors have a duty to follow up on any and all complaints, and have been making as many as three visits for each complaint, leaving what's known as a LS-4 document taped to the front door of the property when they fail to gain access. The NYCBuildings LS-4 notice is a legal request for the property owner to contact the DOB and arrange a date when the premises can be inspected. Failure to comply with this notice may result in the Department obtaining an access warrant authorizing the inspection of the premises against the home owners will.

If you conservatively estimate that each complaint will take up two hours of an inspector's time, than that's more than a week's salary, our tax dollars, thrown down the toilet... Or worse yet, used in some diabolical plot to annoy and harass hard working families during these tough economic times.

Remember that some of these complaints, for instance the ones dealing with crumbling facades and falling debris (a class A complaint) require an immediate response from the DOB in order to protect the public from possible harm. So instead of monitoring potentially disastrous foundation excavations or high rise crane installations, they're rushing out to check these fraudulent claims of falling bricks on the sidewalk and non-existing air conditioners on Sixteenth Street.

If there ever was a case for the NYC Department of Investigations, this is it.

Halloran calls for investigation into bogus building complaints

From the Times Ledger:

The city Department of Buildings is compiling documents and records to hand over to the Queens district attorney’s office in hopes of building a criminal case against two city construction companies that are suspected of reporting more than 1,000 Queens homeowners in recent months for building code violations to generate more business, City Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone) said.

As early as September, the companies have used the 311 call system to lodge hundreds of anonymous, unfounded complaints alleging that entire blocks of homes across the borough have been renting out their basements or performing work without a permit, according to Halloran.

After making the complaints, the companies blanket the neighborhoods with letters advertising their services, which include improving homes in order to avoid DOB fines, the councilman said.

Logs of 311 phone calls obtained by the DOB indicate that at least two-thirds of such complaints made in the past several months originated with either Ticket Busters Inc. of Flushing or Airitan Management Inc. of Brooklyn, said Halloran.

Representatives of both companies denied making the 311 complaints.

“We don’t report people, that’s not our job,” said Ronnie Tan, an auditor at Airitan, citing “company privacy” when asked how it determines where to send letters.

The DOB did not respond to numerous e-mails and phone calls requesting comment, although in December a spokesman said the agency was investigating the complaints.

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.

See what happens when you bring in the Feds?

From the NY Times:

Federal and local authorities arrested seven people on Tuesday — including the owners of two construction testing companies, officials from three contracting companies, and an engineer — on charges they falsified testing documents at four New York construction projects.

The people arrested were charged with mail and wire fraud, and are accused of falsifying or attempting to falsify welding, soil boring and asphalt test documents, according to criminal complaints unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn.

The charges, brought by the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn and based on work by investigators for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the New York City Department of Investigation, represent a growing focus on construction testing, an industry that has come under intense scrutiny in the last two years from the Manhattan district attorney’s office and other agencies.

The case was based on dozens of secretly recorded conversations between some of the defendants and an undercover investigator with the Port Authority inspector general’s office and two unidentified cooperating witnesses, officials said.

Some of those charged were recorded offering or making payoffs of several hundred dollars for the falsified testing documents, and others were recorded accepting payoffs for providing false documents, the officials said.

Some of the documents, according to the charges, were to be provided to the New York City Buildings Department to obtain certificates of occupancy. Others were to be provided to the city’s Parks Department or Housing Authority in order for the companies to be paid.

Tale of the tape proves guy beat himself up

TAPE WORM BEATS SELF UP
By John Doyle, NY Post

A Queens man claimed a bouncer bloodied him when he got tossed from a strip club -- but a surveillance camera there told a different tale.

Khuram Murtaza, 34, called cops after he was tossed out of the Rouge Gentleman's Club, on 58th Street near 55th Avenue, shortly before 1 a.m. Tuesday.

When cops arrived at the Maspeth club, his face was bloody and bruised and he claimed the bouncer had beaten him, sources said.

The bouncer, however, claimed he didn't hit the man and provided proof from the club's surveillance video, the sources said.

Cops viewed the video and it clearly showed Murtaza smashing his face against a car, cutting his own nose, according to court papers.

Murtaza was charged with falsely reporting an incident, said a spokeswoman for Queens DA Richard Brown.

Additional reporting by Christina Carrega