Metro
exclusive

Co-op board members ‘helped themselves to huge payments’

Two board members of a city-sponsored Lower East Side co-op used the Broome Street building’s bank account as a personal piggy bank, paying themselves — and friends or relatives — more than $120,000 in one year alone, The Post has learned.

Board members Martha Pichardo, 50, and Maggy Almonte, 38, are under investigation by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development after complaints about the payments from other shareholders in the building at 157 Broome St. building indicated the duo allegedly failed to file financial and other required documents with the city, sources said.

The agency oversees the low-income co-op program.

The eyebrow-raising payments, made in 2010, include $29,881 in salary or “management fees’’ to both Pichardo, the board president, and Almonte and phone bill “reimbursements” to the two totaling nearly $11,000, tax documents show.

Pichardo reimbursed herself for $13,800 in “repairs and maintenance’’ while Almonte collected $11,045 for similar line items. The duo also reimbursed themselves for $1,800 in “meals and entertainment,’’ and Almonte collected $555 for an “insurance’’ payment, records show.

The building at 157 Broome St.John Roca

In one eight-week period, Pichardo and Almonte wrote themselves checks totaling $38,404.82.

The nearly $60,000 in “management fees’’ Pichardo and Almonte collected represents about 26 percent of the total $231,000 that the 28-unit co-op reported taking in for rental and shareholder fees that year — far exceeding the 8 percent set under city rules.

“We are aware of significant issues regarding how the co-op board has been managing the operations of the cooperative,” a city official told The Post. “The board has not been compliant with their regulatory agreement and requirements to provide the agency with current documentation.”

The 2010 financial documents show part-time building super Cesar Jines — who, according to public records, owns property with a Pichardo relative — collected $30,659 for what one shareholder describes as “generally a two-hour-a-day’’ job and got thousands in reimbursements for repairs and supplies.

Total payments to Pichardo, Almonte and Jines came to more than $126,500 for 2010, more than half the co-op’s $231,000 income.

The co-op was set up in 2008 under an HPD program, which allows low-income tenants to buy apartments — gut-renovated at city expense — in the rehabbed building for just $250 per unit. The tenant shareholders are responsible for running the co-op, with guidance from HPD.

Shareholders can sell their units but must pay a 30 percent “flip tax’’ that goes back to the co-op’s coffers.

Pichardo told The Post she was not on the board and denied making any payments to herself or Almonte.

Almonte, who sold her apartment in September for $305,000 but in November was still involved in board issues, could not be reached for comment.

The co-op lawyer, Andrea Shapiro, said in an e-mail, “The Board of Directors of the corporation has always acted with the full knowledge and consent of a majority of the shareholders.’’

Additional reporting by Lisa Hagen