No jail time for these CityTime scammers who cost taxpayers hundreds of millions.
The three family members of the convicted mastermind behind the colossal payroll-system scheme avoided being sent to the slammer at their sentencing Tuesday.
Mark Mazer’s wife, Svetlana, his mother Larisa Medzon and cousin Anna Makovetskaya were each sentenced to three years probation and 200 hours of community service for helping Mazer launder $25 million in kickbacks from the taxpayer funded project to upgrade the city’s payroll system that ballooned in cost from $63 million to more than $700 million and fell years behind schedule under his watch.
Prosecutors pressed Manhattan federal judge George Daniels to sentence Medzon to a year and a day because she was “significantly more involved” in the scheme than the other two. The 69-year-old admitted to withdrawing $200,000 from multiple banks in small increments so as not to get caught.
Instead, Daniels sentenced her to six months of home confinement and said she’d only be allowed to visit her son, who’s serving a 20-year sentence in a Pennsylvania jail, during that period. She does not have to pay back a fine.
Speaking through a Russian translator, a remorseful Medzon insisted she was a “decent person.”
“I came to this country many years ago with nothing. I was able to make a life for myself and my family,” Medzon told the judge as she wept. “And now, because of myself and my son, we’ve lost everything. I have no one to blame but myself.”
Medzon’s high-power attorney Benjamin Brafman said she was manipulated by her own son to partake as an “errand person” in the massive scheme.
“She became a messenger for her son,” said Brafman. “To send your mother out every day to banks to bring you back money – it’s obscene.”
Meanwhile, Svetlana Mazer, 48, convicted of filing false documents, and Makovetskaya, 43, who admitted to making false statements to a bank, were ordered to each pay back $3,000 in fines as part of their sentences.
“I am very sorry for what I’ve done,” said Svetlana Mazer. “I did not tell the truth. I am sorry to put my family in this situation.”
Svetlana Mazer and Makovetskaya committed serious crimes “made worse because they were in service of a truly massive criminal scheme,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Master.
The three women, whose dozen or so family members cried in the audience Monday, copped plea deals last year and agreed to forfeit more than $27 million in cash and more than $4 million in properties.
Mazer, 50, of Manhasset, was found guilty in November of wire fraud, bribery, money laundering and other charges. His two trust accomplices, convicted on similar charges, are also serving 20-year sentences.