As
NYC Pays $5M For Defrauding FEMA
Inner City Press Asks de Blasio
About SDNY Settlement
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Video,
Photos
NEW YORK CITY,
February 21 – When Mayor Bill
de Blasio took questions in
the Chinatown Senior Citizen
Center on February 21 on
parking placards and then
other topics, Inner City Press
asked him about the City's
proposed $5 million settlement
with the U.S. Attorney for the
Southern District of New York
for defrauding the Federal
Emergency Management Agency in
the wake of Superstorm Sandy.
Video here.
De Blasio replied, we screwed
up, some of our friendly in
the Department of
Transportation present company
excluded screwed up.
(Alongside him on the placard
issue was DoT Commissioner
Polly Trottenberg.) De Blasio
said the City worked with the
Federal government to make
them whole. The settlement is
for now proposed - here's from
the U.S. Attorney's press
release: "Following Sandy, the
NYCDOT created a list of
vehicles within the agency’s
fleet that had been damaged by
the storm and submitted it to
FEMA for indemnification
pursuant to the Public
Assistance program. The
NYCDOT personnel responsible
for generating the list of
damaged vehicles, to whom the
City provided no training on
the Public Assistance program,
made no effort to inspect the
vehicles or otherwise
determine whether any reported
damage was attributable to
Sandy. In fact, a number
of the vehicles included on
this list were inoperable long
before Sandy. In 2014,
based on this faulty list, the
City submitted a request for
indemnification to FEMA
seeking to recover the full
cost of replacing 132 NYCDOT
vehicles. The City
submitted a certification to
FEMA as part of the program
and a request for
indemnification that falsely
attested that all costs were
incurred as a direct result of
Sandy. Many of the
vehicles for which the City
sought full replacement costs
had been nonoperational or not
in use prior to the
storm. As a result of
these false certifications,
FEMA paid the City millions of
dollars to which it was not
entitled. As part of the
proposed settlement, the City
will pay the United States a
total of $5,303,624.
Specifically, the City will
make a cash payment of
$4,126,227.34 and relinquish
rights to an additional
$1,177,396.66 that FEMA had
previously approved for
disbursement. During
this Office’s investigation,
the City withdrew another
$3,196,376 in indemnity
requests, acknowledging that
the costs were ineligible for
reimbursement." We'll have
more on this, and these beats.
Back on February 8 before
Norman Seabrook, former head
of the NYC Corrections
Officers union, was
sentenced by the SDNY to
58 months in prison, a
victim's statement to the
court cited what it called
Seabrook's racist rant on
YouTube.
Afterward on Worth Street
Inner City Press asked
Seabrook about the YouTube
video - actually, an audio
file with an array of still
photographs. Seabrook
told Inner City Press they
doctored it to make him look
bad. His (actual) answer on
Periscope here
- and here
now audio file on YouTube,
here.
In the
SDNY courtroom it was
cognitive dissonance: Norman
Seabrook who rose from poverty
to head of a union with 10,000
members, who endorsed Michael
Bloomberg; Norman Seabrook who
asked for tens of thousands of
dollars to steer union money
into a Cayman Islands hedge
fund which failed.
Prosecutor
Martin Bell referred to a
Ferragamo bag visible in
Seabrook's house for months.
When Seabrook spoke he said it
was a gift with cigars, taking
a cigar out of his suit
jacket.
Seabrook's lawyer
Paul Shechtman
cited
Seabrook's
work on the
so-called
feces bill to
make throwing
excrement at a
corrections
officer a
felony. On the
hand Seabrook
was accused of
threatening
his board
members with
returning to
work in a
prison as
punishment,
and of going
after anyone
who dared run
against or
otherwise
oppose him.
Seabrook felt
that it was
his time to
get paid, that
he was bigger
than the cause
he began
fighting for,
Bell said.
Shechtman also
spoke after the sentencing.
Inner City Press asked him
about Judge
Alvin K.
Hellerstein's
seeming
reversal of an initial
position that it would be hard
to leave Seabrook out on bail
pending appeal. Shechtman
replied affably that he had to
win something, after the 58
month sentence. Video here.
An issue
on a appeal will be whether
Seabrook's second jury should
have heard about the $19
million loss.
Inner City
Press asked Shechtman about
the restitution, how much
would be paid by hedge funders
Murray Huberfeld, Jona
Rechnitz and perhaps (Judge
Hellerstein
indicated)
Jeremy Reichberg. Shechtman
told Inner City Press, If
Norman wins $19 million in the
lottery, we'll have about
that. For now, $2500 is due in
60 days, through the SDNY
Clerk, for the union. We'll
have more on this.
Exiting the courthouse after
Seabrook, with a bag of Utz
potato chips and a copy of the
Daily News was New York Knicks
icon Charles Oakley. He said
that there are others who need
to be locked up as well, and
that the Knicks need better
players. There was no
rebuttal. Periscope video here.
Upcoming in the
SDNY is a recently-filed
complaint by the Bangladesh
Central Bank for the $81
million hacking of its funds,
which were then wired through
the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York, a case
that Inner City Press will
cover. Times change. Watch
this site.
***
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