Charles Hynes didn’t use his slush fund just to pay for a campaign consultant — he doled out the cash to at least two cronies, and the feds want to know who else.
Investigators are already analyzing payments the former Brooklyn DA allegedly made to a campaign consultant from the fund, which was full of money seized from criminal defendants.
Probers are looking at every payment from the forfeiture fund with an eye on money that went to consultants and to 32 neighborhood outreach centers Hynes set up, The Post has learned.
Among those paid were Lisa Smith, a Brooklyn Law School professor and former assistant DA under Hynes, and Larry Morrish, a Bay Ridge community activist, a source told The Post.
“God only knows what else came out of that account,” the source said.
Hynes is at the center of a probe that began after the Department of Investigation found he broke city rules when he used more than $1 million from the fund to pay a political p.r. consultant from 2003 to 2013.
Mortimer Matz was paid $219,924 before Hynes’ failed 2013 re-election bid and “had a major role” in the campaign, the DOI said in a report this month.
Hynes lost to Ken Thompson in a Democratic primary last September and again as an independent in the general election.
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has opened a probe. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has joined the probe and a federal grand jury has been convened in Brooklyn, according to the source.
Among the issues being looked at is whether Hynes’ opening of the 32 outreach centers was only a political p.r. effort. The centers were closed this year.
Morrish said he worked in Bay Ridge and did “outreach to present the services of the DA’s office to the community.” He wouldn’t disclose his salary. Records show he wasn’t on the city payroll.
Smith said she worked as a consultant and helped write grants. She said she did not know where her compensation came from.
She worked for Hynes in the ’90s, her bio at Brooklyn Law says. Her husband, David Dince, also worked in the DA’s office, and her daughter is an ADA there, hired during Hynes’ tenure.
A Thompson rep said Morrish and Smith were not staff but paid as consultants. She wouldn’t comment on whether they were paid from the slush fund.