Scammers sent hairdressers and cooks — many hired off Craigslist — to impersonate licensed safety managers at dozens of high-rise construction projects throughout Manhattan, officials said Wednesday.
The phony safety specialists included “hairdressers, bellhops, window-treatment specialists, short-order cooks, musicians, eBay vendors, and other individuals who the indictment alleges were utterly unqualified,” Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance said.
The scheme, which put worker and public safety at risk, ran from at least 2012 through earlier this year, when a Department of Buildings inspector noticed that a safety log was purportedly signed by a man who had died last year, Department of Investigations Commissioner Mark Peters said.
Buildings on the Upper East Side, the Financial District and Gramercy Park are among those where construction work was allegedly overseen by fraudsters.
Busted in the scam were officials at two companies that provide safety inspectors to construction firms: Richard Marini, 60, and Richard Sfraga, 49, of Avanti Building Consultants, and Kishowar “Kris” Pervez, 40, of NYCB Engineering Group.
According to court documents, Marini was caught texting in March with an underling whom he directed to forge two days’ worth of safety-review records.
“Nobody wants to do it as a one shot deal for yesterday and today. And $55.00 an hour does not sound for them good too,” the unidentified accomplice wrote.
“It’s not $55 an hour they are gettin $220 for one hours work,” Marini allegedly replied.
Court papers also say Marini continued the scam even when he knew he was under investigation, texting his partner Sfraga a day after DOI investigators seized records from a job site at 100 John St.
“We lost John st thanks to DOI but no loss that’s Mionian and they don’t pay any way…I’m more concerned about lenahan but at this point I guess it’s all futile….” he allegedly wrote on April 19.
Prosecutor Diana Florence said in court that Marini has two prior felony convictions, including one from 1994 in which he was convicted of fleecing two victims out of $100,000 by selling phony life insurance.
“Mr. Marini seems to have dedicated himself to a life of fraudulent activities and it has caught up to him,” Florence said.
Also arrested Wednesday were four Avanti “interns” who allegedly posed as safety managers: Brandon Taylor, 38, Besik Kelly, 53, George Tattos, 59, and Vincent Bruzzesse, 70.
Everyone was released without bail except for Pervez, who was freed on $250,000 bail, and Marini, who was ordered held pending a hearing to determine if the $250,000 bail offered by his common-law wife was tied to criminal activity.