The former Deutsche Bank building in Lower Manhattan

Lend Lease, formerly known as Bovis Lend Lease, is expected to admit to fraud today, and pay a $50 million fine to avoid fraud charges, the New York Times reported. The criminal charges stem from the construction company overbilling the government, according to the Times, in which laborers received pay for two hours of overtime that they did not work so that Lend Lease could keep them motivated to work. [more]

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has announced charges against a former chaplain and Satmar rabbi with the New York City Department of Corrections with the largest individual case of tenant fraud ever discovered by the Department of Investigations.

Bharara’s office charged Leib Glanz and his brother Menashe Glanz each with one count of conspiracy to commit theft of federal funds and one count of theft of federal funds in connection with a $200,000 Brooklyn housing fraud scheme.

“As alleged in the complaint, Leib and Menashe Glanz engaged in a years-long subterfuge to take criminal advantage of federal housing subsidies,” Bharara said. “Especially in these trying economic times, we cannot tolerate stealing from the public.” — Katherine Clarke [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]

Elviston Ramasir, the former president of Long Island-based real estate company Home Free Realty, has been sentenced to 51 months in federal prison for two separate fraudulent real estate schemes, the U.S. attorney’s office said today.
Elviston Ramasir, 28, stole $1.5 million from an investor by promising huge rates of return in properties that Ramasir promised to buy but never did. He later used Craigslist to solicit renters for two properties he owned,– one in Ozone Park, New York and the other in Long Beach, New York– then kept their money and didn’t allow them to occupy the properties. [more]

Once among the top construction firms in New York City, HRH Construction, the 86-year-old company that built Citigroup’s Midtown headquarters and many of Donald Trump’s metro-area projects, is now mired in bankruptcy court and fighting off allegations of fraud. Crain’s reported that HRH’s downfall began in the early 2000s during the construction of 2 Broadway, a building owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The project went $300 million over budget, thanks in part to HRH overbilling the construction costs, according to arbitrators who ordered the firm to repay $6.5 million in 2007. [more]

[Updated 1:41 p.m. with comment from Lehr's attorney] Manhattan-based construction company Lehr Construction and four of its executives have been indicted on charges of enterprise corruption, scheming to defraud, and grand larceny related to a multi-million dollar fraud scheme, the Manhattan district attorney announced today.

Lehr, which specializes in the interior renovation of construction projects for companies such as Goldman Sachs, SL Green Realty and Tishman Speyer, and the four execs allegedly defrauded its construction management clients of at least $30 million over the past decade. TRD [more]

A scam artist has allegedly duped eight would-be Brooklyn renters in Bedford-Stuyvesant into paying him rental money and deposits on units he neither owns nor has any affiliation with, police say. The alleged con-artist advertised the units in January, according to the Wall Street Journal, and even broke into some of the apartments to show them to potential renters. The reported incidents of fraud took place during January, but authorities say the suspect may be continuing his scheme. The victims of the alleged scam say they only learned they’d been conned when they tried to move into their homes but were locked out. [WSJ]

So-called loan modification “specialists” are coming under fire for taking thousands of dollars from struggling borrowers in exchange for the promise of lower monthly mortgage payments and not following through. According to the Wall Street Journal, a group of pro bono foreclosure attorneys filed a lawsuit yesterday in state Supreme Court in Nassau County that named several loan modification companies operating out of Garden City, which have allegedly scammed homeowners into believing that they had better chances of getting their mortgage payments modified if they paid for the companies’ services. [more]

Diane Passage, a former Scores stripper and current wife of scam artist Kenneth Starr, may get thrown out of the $7.5 million Upper East Side triplex her husband bought with funds bilked from celebrity clients like Uma Thurman and Al Pacino. According to the Post, federal prosecutors are asking the couple to surrender the condominium voluntarily or else face legal action. Passage, who has been living at the Lux 74 apartment since her husband’s $50 million fraud was uncovered last May, also apparently hasn’t been paying her more than $7,000-a-month common charges to the building, a judge noted yesterday. [more]

New York contest promoter-turned-con man Scott Cicerone faces fraud and larceny charges after allegedly promoting a bogus free-home raffle, according to the Wall Street Journal. Cicerone and partner John Luongo, who invested $1 million in renovations on a Massapequa home, were in hot water after defaulting on the home’s $1 million loan in June 2008. The pair devised a scheme to hold a raffle for the home, planning to use the profits from the sales of the $50 tickets to pay off their debt — but Cicerone had other plans. [more]