Metro

Ex-Citigroup exec pleads guilty to embezzling $22M

A legally-blind former Citigroup executive pleaded guilty today to charges that he embezzled more than $22 million from the New York banking giant and used the cash to buy luxury cars.

Gary Foster pleaded guilty in Brooklyn federal court to bank fraud charges and now faces up to 10 years in prison as part of a plea deal with federal prosecutors.

Because he is legally blind, Foster could not drive — so he hired a chauffeur to drive him around in his high-end sports cars, sources said.

The 35-year-old former Citigroup vice-president also could be fined as much as $44 million – or twice the amount he defrauded the bank.

The US Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn has already seized $16 million in real estate holdings and personal property that Foster acquired with the funds, including showcase apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn, as well as homes and apartments in New Jersey.

As part of the plea deal, the feds also seized imported automobiles the banker bought, such as a Ferrari, a Maserati GranTurismo and a BMW 550i, Assistant US Attorney Michael Yaeger told the court.

The 12-year Citigroup veteran quit the bank in January and was arrested earlier this summer at Kennedy Airport as he was getting off a flight from Bangkok.

Before leaving his assistant vice president post in the Long Island City, Queens, offices of the bank’s treasury finance department, Foster earned $100,000 annually managing its internal investments.

Foster’s embezzlement scheme began in Sept. 2003 and continued into 2011, prosecutors said.

“It is alleged that he obtained over $22 million,” Yaeger told Judge Eric Vitaliano.

Foster admitted in court that he had wired the money from internal Citi accounts into his personal Chase bank account and wrote e-mails and sent faxes to order the transfers.

“I did this from my Citigroup office in Queens County, New York,” Foster told the judge.

Prosecutors say he covered up the scam by assigning phony contract or deal numbers to make the transfers appear bona fide, and had himself assigned as contact person if there were problems.

Foster allegedly dropped $12 million of the embezzled money on properties in Midtown and New Jersey, bought a Garden State house for his parents and paid off a mortgage for his ex-wife.

In December, a month before quitting, Foster dropped $3 million on a 10,000-square-foot, six-bedroom mansion in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, and $1.93 million on a Rockefeller Center apartment right across West 48th Street from a Citi branch.

The Rutgers University grad also bought two condos worth a combined $2.5 million in a Jersey City glass-tower high-rise overlooking the Hudson River.

“I walked into the unit and was like, ‘Wow. This is a really great view,’ ” Foster told The Record last year in an article that was accompanied by a photo of him in the 33rd-floor unit, sitting in a chair on a gaudy zebra-striped carpet.

One of Foster’s homes has ceilings painted in gold leaf, while a bathroom in another was furnished with mirrors that turn into TV screens when a button is pressed, a source said.

Foster “loved to hang out in spas, getting facials and massages” — and stocked multiple bank accounts with loads of looted cash, the source said.

Another source said that Foster, who has two children, became a regular in the Manhattan nightclub scene. He would show up to hot spots like Greenhouse and NYC wearing eye-catching watches and dropping as much as $2,000 on bottle service.

“The defendant violated his employer’s trust and stole a stunning amount of money over an extended period of time to finance his personal lifestyle,” Brooklyn US Attorney Loretta Lynch said today after the court hearing.

mmaddux@nypost.com