Westchester, Rockland residents among 70 arrested in NYC Housing Authority bribery case

A Garnerville man and a Mount Vernon man were among 70 current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority charged Tuesday with allegedly accepting cash payments from contractors in exchange for Housing Authority contracts, according to Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Williams said in a news release that 66 of the 70 defendants were arrested Tuesday morning in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and North Carolina. The charges were the largest number of federal bribery charges given on a single day in the history of the U.S. Justice Department.

Among the defendants were Corey Gilmore, 45, of Garnerville and Garth Small, 55, of Mount Vernon.

Williams said the New York City Housing Authority is the largest public housing authority in the country and provides housing to 1 in 17 New Yorkers across the city. He said outside contractors are hired to work on public housing construction jobs through a bidding process that requires Housing Authority approval to grant contracts.

However, some Housing Authority staff were permitted to approve no-bid contracts as long as the contracts were lower than $10,000 and were approved by other NYCHA staff at the site of development.

The investigation found that the defendants, all of whom Williams said were working for the Housing Authority at the time, "demanded and received cash in exchange for NYCHA contracts," whether up front before the job was concluded or after the job had ended.

Williams said the defendants allegedly demanded between $500 to $2,000 for these contracts, totaling over $2 million in illegal payments from contractors to grant over $13 million worth of no-bid contracts.

“Instead of acting in the interests of NYCHA residents, the City of New York, or taxpayers, the 70 defendants charged today allegedly used their jobs at NYCHA to line their own pockets," Williams said. "This action is the largest single-day bribery takedown in the history of the Justice Department. NYCHA residents deserve better. The culture of corruption at NYCHA ends today."

Gilmore and Small were both charged with solicitation and receipt of a bribe and extortion under color of official right. They could face up to 10 years in prison for the bribe charge and 20 years for the extortion charge.

Williams said the investigation was conducted with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the New York City Department of Investigation, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the New York Field Office of Homeland Security Investigations and the Northeast Region of the U.S. Department of Labor.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: NYC housing bribery case: Lower Hudson Valley residents arrested