Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly touted a core motto during his nearly four years in office: His administration is one that can “Get Stuff Done.”
But in instance after instance, according to state and federal prosecutors, “getting stuff done” with the Adams administration often meant paying a bribe to an administration official.
The latest accusations come in four indictments handed up against two members of Adams’ inner circle: his former longtime adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin and Jesse Hamilton, a friend and former state senator whom Adams installed as deputy commissioner at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Lewis-Martin’s son, two developers and the owners of a Brooklyn stage company were also indicted.
Like numerous other crimes allegedly committed by the Adams administration, the schemes involved one of the city’s most precious commodities: real estate.
Lewis-Martin is charged with taking cash, free catering and free home renovations in exchange for helping the businesspeople steer lucrative contracts, speed up development approvals and temporarily kill a street redesign plan. Hamilton played along and nabbed his own free home upgrades, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office say.
All have pleaded not guilty. Adams is not charged in relation to the alleged scheme.
“I have not been accused of any wrongdoing, and my focus remains on serving the 8.5 million New Yorkers by making our city safer and more affordable every day,” he said in a written statement sent by City Hall in response to questions about the alleged corruption.
Déjà vu all over again
If the new indictments sound familiar, it’s because they fit a pattern of pay-to-play, where multiple city officials — and even Adams himself — have been accused by prosecutors of trading favors for cash and goodies from well-connected real estate developers.
Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who previously charged Lewis-Martin with similar schemes late last year, said she had “engaged in classic bribery conspiracies.”
“Hardworking city employees were undermined, businesses and developers who followed the law were pushed aside, and the public was victimized by corruption at the highest levels of government,” Bragg said.
Lewis-Martin’s attorney Arthur Aidala countered that her “only so-called ‘offense’ was fulfilling her duty [by] helping fellow citizens navigate the city’s outdated and overwhelming bureaucracy.”
Those bureaucratic demands can compel developers to look for a shortcut, especially if they can find a willing participant in the highest ranks of government, said Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor with the Southern District of New York. Real estate is often at the heart of local bribery schemes because any red tape costs owners and developers time and money.
“A lot is riding on execution in a speedy way,” Richman said. “If it’s not a quick approval, that can really set you back financially.”
Getting stuff (allegedly) done
The indictments describe how Lewis-Martin pressured top officials from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, including Commissioner Adolfo Carrion, to usher a Red Hook affordable housing project to the front of a notoriously backlogged pipeline on behalf of the project’s developer, Yechiel Landau.
She also is accused of leaning on the housing agency to approve an agreement that allowed Landau to take sole ownership of another city-funded development near the Bronx’s Crotona Park.
“I’m gonna speak to the mayor and then that’s it,” Lewis-Martin texted Landau in April 2024, according to the indictment. “We gotta get that place [HPD] under control, so when we f—ing tell them something, we expect them to make that s— move.”
Bragg said those efforts were a success. Landau closed on the Red Hook project in December 2024 and construction on the 371-unit building was well underway when Gothamist visited Thursday. He also received approval to buy out his business partner on the Bronx building. Landau’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.
Another indictment details how Lewis-Martin steered migrant shelter contracts to hotel owners referred by developer Tian Ji Li — who in turn received a 10% kickback — and how she intervened with the city’s buildings and fire departments to expedite safety approvals at Li’s Queens karaoke bar.
In exchange, Li funneled at least $50,000 to Lewis-Martin’s son, Glenn Martin II, and hosted parties for her, prosecutors say. Li’s attorney declined to comment.
The charges mirror the previous indictment against Lewis-Martin. Bragg’s office last year accused her of pressuring city officials to approve changes to a bar and hotel owned by another pair of developers, who in turn gave her son $100,000.
Greatest hits
Nearly two years have passed since Bragg charged Adams’ former Buildings Commissioner Eric Ulrich with trading favors — like speeding up inspections, helping lift a vacate order and attempting to clear a homeless shelter for disaster victims — in exchange for $150,000 in gifts from a developer and other associates. Ulrich has pleaded not guilty and is still awaiting trial.
But by the time of his indictment, it appeared that the Adams administration already had a policy of streamlining inspections and approvals for well-connected real estate bosses.
Emails obtained by Gothamist in 2023 showed how City Hall instructed inspectors to fast-track fire safety inspections for elite developers and wealthy donors, even if it meant cancelling scheduled inspections at other locations.
Adams himself has skirted similar charges.
Last year, federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York charged Adams with accepting luxury travel perks and illegal campaign contributions in exchange for pressuring former Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro to have his inspectors approve fire safety systems at a Turkish consulate building over their own objections so that the site could open in time for a visit from that country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In the same indictment, prosecutors alleged that the Department of Buildings lifted a partial stop-work order at a stalled condo project in Brooklyn shortly after the developer appealed directly to Adams for assistance.
Prosecutors said then that the developer, Tolib Mansurov, had also funneled $10,000 in illegal contributions to Adams’ mayoral campaign.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice dropped the case against Adams, arguing it would interfere with his ability to assist the federal government’s mass deportation efforts — an exchange a federal judge said “smacks of a bargain.”
Republican prosecutors, including interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, insisted the government would have secured a conviction in the Adams case and resigned earlier this year rather than drop the case.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
