New York Area Unions and the Mafia

Can Labor Unions ever escape the influence of organized crime? Recent indictments show that two labor unions were plagued by mafia influence:

A trucking company owner, Joseph Spinnato, together with unnamed others, repeatedly embezzled money from Local 282’s health and pension funds. The charges detailed an enduring practice in which construction and trucking companies contribute less money to union benefit funds than is required, usually by underreporting the hours that employees work. While the scheme often operates with the complicity of union stewards, officials with Local 282 and its benefits funds were not accused of wrongdoing.

Louis Mosca, the business manager of Laborers’ Local 325 in Jersey City, was charged with taking a $2,000 bribe to give someone a union card, a move often done to help someone qualify for a construction job or union benefits. Michael King, a shop steward of Laborers’ Local 731 in Queens, was also accused of selling a membership.

Prosecutors say the unions that deliver cement and other building supplies have long been a magnet for Mafia involvement because mob officials know that if they delay deliveries, construction companies can lose large amounts of money. Those union locals thus become an ideal pressure point for extortion.

Brooklyn Police Corruption Scandal Cast Shadow On Arrests

If you can't trust the messenger, you can't trust the message. That is exactly what is happening with this ongoing Brooklyn police corruption scandal that will allow criminals to go free:

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office has dismissed charges or vacated convictions in 183 cases because one or more of the four officers had played a significant role in them. In addition, the city’s special prosecutor has thrown out five pending indictments against eight defendants.

The scandal emerged in September when an officer in the squad, Detective Sean Johnstone, was heard on a departmental tape recording saying that he and his partner, Officer Julio Alvarez, had recovered 28 bags of cocaine from a suspect but turned in only 17. The officers were charged in December with misconduct and falsifying records. An investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau led to the arrests in January of two other officers, Sgt. Michael Arenella and Officer Jerry Bowens.

Court papers said they took drugs and cash they had recovered and gave them to an informant in exchange for information. While the officers who were charged are not suspected of making any illegal profit, the corruption investigation has forced prosecutors and defense lawyers to review cases that involved any of the four officers.

Defense attorneys are checking whether clients were wrongly charged or convicted. Steven Banks, the attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, said they expected to review several hundred cases. The cases dismissed so far represent 129 misdemeanors and 54 felonies, according to the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes.

This means that in some cases, convicted dealers are back on the streets with their records wiped clean and sealed. Addicts who were sentenced to treatment instead of jail could now be ineligible for the programs. And charges, whether for possession of small amounts of marijuana or dozens of grams of cocaine, are being dropped.

This will cost the city a lot of money as well as erode people's confidence in the Brooklyn police department.

Police Officers Become Crack Dealers To Make Arrests

All police forces use informants to make their case. These informants are usually paid with cash or leniency, however, some Brooklyn police officers decided to become crack dealers in order to make their cases.

Four police officers in Brooklyn are under arrest in a case that involves paying informants with the very drugs they craved, taken from the dealers who were arrested after the informants pointed them out. Two of the officers were charged in an internal sting last week after another was caught on a department audio tape bragging about the practice in September, officials said.

Prosecutors have moved to dismiss more than 80 criminal cases because the officers caught in the scandal were considered critical to successful prosecutions, law enforcement officials said, and the office of the Brooklyn district attorney is analyzing about 100 more potentially tainted cases.

Can you imagine how deep rooted this problem will get. They will probably have criminals pretending that the officers used this type of payment on them. This will definitely get nastier as time goes on. I wonder how many top officials knew about their activities and decided to turn a blind eye to it.

Kerik Loan Activity Brought To Light

Bernard B. Kerik fully repaid a $250,000 personal loan cited in his recent federal indictment days after city investigators began asking about it in 2005, according to people who have been briefed on the transaction.

Federal prosecutors have not alleged that anything about the loan itself was improper. But they charged in a 16-count indictment unsealed two weeks ago that Mr. Kerik had failed to disclose it to the federal government as required after the White House appointed him to train the Iraqi police in 2003.

The loan allegation was one of the few surprises in the indictment, which charged Mr. Kerik with tax evasion and fraud largely in connection with previously known financial transactions. In filing the charges, prosecutors with United States attorney’s office declined to identify a “wealthy Israeli industrialist” said to have financed the loan or to name the “Brooklyn businessman” said to have served as an intermediary in the transaction, referring to them only as John Doe No. 7 and John Doe No. 8.

Ex-Publisher's Suit Plays a Giuliani/Kerik Angle

Judith Regan, the former book publisher, says in a lawsuit filed yesterday protesting her dismissal by the News Corporation, the media conglomerate, that a senior executive there encouraged her to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard B. Kerik after he had been nominated to become homeland security secretary in late 2004.

The lawsuit asserts that the News Corporation executive wanted to protect the presidential aspirations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor, who had appointed him New York City police commissioner and had recommended him for the federal post.

Ms. Regan makes the charge at the start of a 70-page filing that seeks $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at HarperCollins and its parent company, News Corporation, after her project to publish a book with O. J. Simpson was abandoned amid a storm of protest.

In the civil complaint filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Ms. Regan says the company has long sought to promote Mr. Giuliani’s ambitions. But the lawsuit does not elaborate on that charge, identify the executive who she says pressured her to mislead investigators, or offer details to support her claim.

In fact, the allegation about the executive makes up a small part of a much broader array of claims about what she says was her improper removal from a job atop one of the more commercially successful book publishing operations.

A News Corporation spokeswoman who declined to be named said that the company saw no merit in the filing. A spokeswoman for Mr. Giuliani declined to comment.

Ms. Regan had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, ReganBooks, began work on his memoir, “The Lost Son.” In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near ground zero that had been donated as a haven for rescue and recovery workers.

Mr. Kerik claimed in 2004 that he had withdrawn his nomination because of problems with the hiring of a nanny. He was indicted last week on federal tax fraud and other charges.

US Will Ask a Grand Jury to Indict Kerik

Federal prosecutors will ask a grand jury today to indict Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York police commissioner, on charges that include tax fraud, corruption and conspiracy counts, according to people who have been briefed on the case.

The grand jury, convening in Westchester County, has heard evidence about Mr. Kerik for about a year as part of a broad federal inquiry into a variety of issues, including his acceptance of $165,000 in renovations from a contractor who was seeking a city license.

Prosecutors are also seeking to charge Mr. Kerik, 52, with failing to report as income more than $200,000 in rent that they say was paid on his behalf to use a luxury Upper East Side apartment where he lived with his family around the time he left his city post, the people briefed on the case said.

Investigators have not suggested that Mr. Kerik’s benefactor, Steve Witkoff, a commercial real estate developer, was involved in any wrongdoing. If the grand jury approves an indictment, as expected, it will remain sealed until tomorrow, when Mr. Kerik would be arraigned in United States District Court in White Plains, N.Y.

Charges could complicate the presidential campaign of Mr. Kerik’s friend, patron and former business partner, Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, whose mentorship was partly responsible for Mr. Kerik’s sharp ascent into prominence. Mr. Giuliani declined to comment through a spokeswoman yesterday, but has said he is not worried about the impact such charges might have on his campaign.