Buildings Department audits plunge as agency closes loophole
The former chief crane inspector for the Department of Buildings was sentenced to two years in prison for a bribe scheme that put under-qualified people behind the controls of 200-foot-high “cherry picker” cranes, the New York Post reported. “I’d like to apologize to the city in general for letting them down,” James Delayo said in
court this morning. Delayo was convicted of taking $10,000 over the course of seven years to pass cranes through inspection and sell operating licenses to a handful of workers at a Long Island crane company, Nu-Way Crane Service. In at least one case, Delayo signed off on an operating license to a crane operator who had
never even taken his driving exam. The scheme was discovered in 2008, through a probe by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the city Department of Investigation into a spate of construction accidents, including two
fatal collapses of larger tower cranes. [Post]
