From left: 172 Forsyth Street and 136 West 133rd Street

A property manager and a treasurer at two Housing Development Fund Corporation buildings on the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side have been accused of stealing from the buildings, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s office announced today. The DA’s office filed felony charges against Robert Caballero and Gordon Jenkins, for stealing from two separate low-income co-ops.

Caballero was indicted on charges of grand larceny, forgery, criminal possession of a forged instrument and falsifying business records for forging checks and stealing more than $260,000 from an HDFC co-operative at 172 Forsyth Street, for which he was the property manager. [more]

St. Vincent’s Hospital is the subject of an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s fraud unit over accusations that it purposely allowed its finances to slip so it could be sold to a private developer, the New York Post reported. Investigators are examining significant payments to top executives at the hospital, sources said.

“This was a well-thought-out plan,” said Tom Shanahan, a lawyer for a group of former St. Vincent doctors and nurses that is suing the hospital. “They wanted out and had to justify it to the state. They were running it into the ground.”

Former hospital CEO Henry Amoroso oversaw the excessive spending, which led to $1 billion in debt and bankruptcy. If not for the bankruptcy, state officials would not have allowed the hospital to close, sources told the Post. [more]

[Update: 1:58 pm]
A married couple who allegedly perpetrated a Medicaid scam to conceal their Brooklyn real estate holdings is being indicted today, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. The couple, who allegedly own roughly $12 million worth of properties in Brooklyn, reportedly falsified Medicaid applications as a means to cover up their real estate holdings. The indictment was set to be announced this morning. The couple has been identified as Praim “Roger” Singh and wife Thackoordai Singh. They have been formally charged with third-degree welfare fraud, third-degree grand larceny and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing.

TRD

[more]

115 Spring Street

Richard Bassik and his firm Downtown Properties allegedly stole more
than $2.1 from the accounts of mostly residential real estate
properties that they managed [more]

The office of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney is boosting its efforts to crack down on financial fraud with the launch of a new civil frauds unit, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara announced today. The new unit, headed by Sean Cenawood, the office’s former affirmative civil enforcement coordinator, will target mortgage fraud, bank fraud, and fraud related to federal stimulus spending, among other white collar crimes. More than two dozen attorneys will be devoted to working with the new civil frauds unit and another recently-established unit targeting complex frauds, “using every weapon…to combat financial fraud and to vindicate its victims,” Bharara said. The new unit will be located at the U.S. District Attorney’s Office at 86 Chambers Street. TRD

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and the Wagner Houses in Harlem

Long Island City contracting firm Remy Building Corporation, which was hired to perform masonry work at 13 New York City Housing Authority buildings, and its owner have been indicted for defrauding its employees out of $484,000 in wages and benefits, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau announced today. The company and owner Richard Martinez of Bloomfield, N.J., allegedly omitted the names of 16 non-union workers from monthly payrolls in an attempt to conceal the fact that they were being paid only $18.75 per hour for their work at the Wagner Houses in Harlem, though they were entitled to $51.54, according to state labor laws. The fraud, which was said to have occurred between Aug. 1, 2008 and June 20, 2009, was discovered when officials at the local union found that the shop steward there had accepted $300 in bribes for not reporting that Remy was using non-union workers. For the most serious charge, Martinez could serve five to 15 years in prison. TRD [more]

The owner of a small Manhattan property management company was arrested today and accused of stealing more than $1.3 million from the operating accounts of six clients, according to the office of the Manhattan district attorney.

Prosecutors claim Mark Modano, owner of Mark Modano LLC, co-mingled funds from buildings including 805 Madison Avenue between November 2003 and November 2008, and covered losses in one building using cash from others.

His responsibilities as manager included collecting rent, paying building expenses, renovations of apartment units and paying property taxes, authorities said.

He allegedly placed all the funds in larger master accounts, instead of maintaining them in separate accounts as required. He used the money from the master accounts for his own use, prosecutors said.
[more]

The Manhattan District Attorney’s office is investigating
subcontractors at the World Trade Center site for paying construction
workers directly in cash, without paying taxes or making contributions
to the workers’ pension funds. The DA said the taxes and pension
payments lost could be in the millions. DA Robert Morgenthau said the
office was looking into whether the site’s general contractors, Bovis
Lend Lease and Tishman Construction, were aware of the alleged fraud. [more]

A Brooklyn man impersonated his deceased, 77-year-old mother — even
donning a red cardigan and lipstick — in an alleged attempt to receive
social security benefits and steal the Park Slope brownstone she once
owned, according to the district attorney’s office. Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes today announced a 47-count
indictment against 49-year-old Thomas Parkin and his friend Mhilton
Rimolo, 47, in connection with the elaborate scam. The two were charged with first-degree grand larceny, and if convicted,
may serve up to 25 years in prison, according to a spokesperson for the
DA’s office. They were also charged with conspiracy, forgery, perjury
and criminal impersonation in connection with a scam. They are being
arraigned this morning at Kings County Supreme Court. [more]