Showing posts with label Cy Vance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cy Vance. Show all posts

Friday, September 3, 2021

Shabby D.A.'s

 


 NY Post

 District attorneys across the Big Apple last year declined to prosecute accused felons at nearly twice the rate of 2019 — letting more than 6,500 suspects off the hook, The Post has learned.

Prosecutors dropped all charges in 16.9 percent of the 38,635 felony cases that were closed in New York City during 2020, according to data compiled by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services.

The year before, that rate was just 8.7 percent and the average for 2016 to 2019 was an even lower 8 percent, the statistics show.

Even though far fewer cases were disposed of last year, the 6,522 defendants whose charges were dropped exceeded the 5,985 who weren’t prosecuted in 2019.

The total number of cases closed in 2020 plunged by a massive 44.1 percent last year amid court closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic — down from 69,119 the year before.

A law enforcement source said there were “a lot of layers to the problem,” including veteran prosecutors retiring or leaving for other jobs and “inexperienced [prosecutors] and cops making it harder to do trials,” as well as the political nature of DAs’ jobs.

 “The DAs are worried about getting re-elected,” the source said.

“Plus, you throw in a bucket of ‘woke’ and no one is getting prosecuted.”

The source also pointed to controversial, recently enacted laws governing the disclosure of evidence to the defense, known as “discovery.”

“Now, if someone takes a plea, you still have to provide the discovery information even though the case is closed,” the source said.

“Before, you didn’t have to. If you DP [decline to prosecute] a case, there is no discovery.”


Saturday, March 13, 2021

Cy Vance's last dance

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.9yuOWOIBhb0JpwGmU1-YWwHaFf%26pid%3DApi&f=1

NY Daily News

Knee deep in millions of pages of ex-president Donald Trump’s tax returns, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. said Friday he would not run for a fourth term.

“Representing the People of New York during this pivotal era for our city and our justice system has been the privilege of a lifetime,” said Vance in a statement.

“When I ran for this job in 2009, I said that a District Attorney’s responsibilities should extend beyond obtaining convictions in court, and that a 21st century prosecutor’s mandate is to move our justice system and our community forward.”

The announcement comes just weeks after Vance claimed victory in a bitter court fight over access to Trump’s taxes that made it to the Supreme Court.

 His critics say that Vance mostly reserved his gung-ho approach to pursuing criminal cases against Black and Hispanic New Yorkers while taking a more lenient approach for the city’s elite, including his decision not to pursue one of the earliest groping accusations against then powerful movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

But that victory was partially sullied by the fact that Vance declined to bring charges against Weinstein in 2015 — pre-#MeToo movement — for allegedly groping Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez.

 

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Cy Vance puts justice in quarantine

THE CITY

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. is blaming the coronavirus pandemic to justify dropping charges in a major construction fraud case tainted by allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, THE CITY has learned.

In what appears to be the first instance of COVID-19 knocking out a high-profile criminal prosecution in New York City, Vance revealed in court papers filed Monday that he won’t put a key bribery case back before a grand jury.

That’s because the actions of sitting grand juries have been suspended and no new panels have been convened since mid March when the coronavirus forced the shutdown of much of the state’s court system.

The case dropped by Vance involved one of several defendants in a wide-ranging construction bribery prosecution that’s now the subject of an internal review. At issue are accusations that the lead prosecutor in the case, Diana Florence, withheld evidence undermining her star witness.

 One of those defendants was Henry Chlupsa, a former executive of an engineering firm charged with bribing the witness, a city bureaucrat, for inside information to win multi-million-dollar contracts.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber convicted Chlupsa in November following a three-week non-jury trial. Weeks later, Chlupsa’s attorney, Nelson Boxer, learned that the DA’s office had failed to turn over thousands of internal emails and interviews with the informant in which he claimed he never took bribes from anyone.

In January, Nelson asked Farber to vacate the conviction and dismiss the indictment.
 
In a court filing Monday, Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Moore Jr. agreed the conviction should be vacated, conceding the DA’s office hadn’t handed over the disputed material as it should have.
Moore insisted, though, the criminal charges against Chlupsa were still viable. But because of the COVID-19 restrictions on grand juries, the DA decided not to bring a new case against the now 77-year-old Chlupsa, Moore said.

“In an effort to conserve resources, especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic, and for the other reasons described below, the People will not be seeking to re-present new charges against the defendant to a new grand jury,” Moore wrote.

“In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, no new grand juries will be convened for the foreseeable future,” he noted.

Thursday, February 13, 2020

D.A. Vance plans to overlook a bulk of cases because of work overload from bail reform law



CBS NY

There may end up being a startling and some say worrisome consequence of New York’s controversial criminal justice reform laws.

CBS2’s Marcia Kramer has learned that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. is considering dropping some cases over an inability to comply with new evidence rules.

Overwhelmed by paperwork and what he calls the “unsustainable hours” required to comply with the new so-called “discovery” rules enacted by state lawmakers as part of the new laws, Vance is considering the drastic step of simply letting some bad guys off the hook, not indicting them, Kramer reported.

“We are evaluating whether to defer or even decline prosecution in certain classes of cases,” Vance said in a Jan. 24 email to the approximately 500 assistant district attorneys who work for him.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (Photo by Jeenah Moon/Getty Images)
CBS2 urban affairs expert Mark Peters said Vance is being driven to consider the extreme solution by new rules that require prosecutors to turn over evidence to defense attorneys within 15 days of an arrest.

“That’s a real public safety concern,” Peters said. “Whenever you’ve got a situation where prosecutors feel like they need to start declining cases — not because they don’t have enough evidence, not because they’re not convinced of guilt, but simply because the burdens of discovery make it impossible to get the work done — that’s going to impact public safety"

How much work was Cy overloaded with when he blew off witness accounts of Harvey Weinstein's sexual assaults and Donald Trump and his kin's screwing over their clients from his former Soho building?

Sunday, January 26, 2020

D.A. Vance's assistant prosecutor hid trial evidence to protect developers and contractors


THE CITY 

 The head of the Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.’s vaunted Construction Fraud Task Force left her post this week after allegations surfaced that she withheld damaging evidence about a key cooperating witness in seven major bribery cases, THE CITY has learned.

Assistant District Attorney Diana Florence had prosecuted most of the high-profile cases involving construction wage theft, bribery and worker deaths brought by Vance in the last few years.

He appointed her “attorney-in-charge” of the task force when he formed it in August 2015 to crack down on wrongdoing in the industry.

Florence stepped down Tuesday shortly after allegations emerged in court papers that she kept secret a 38-minute audiotape in which the key informant in a series of construction bribery cases denied under oath to city investigators that he’d accepted any bribes.

Ifeanyi “Manny” Madu, a former city Department of Environmental Protection manager who was involved in picking vendors, was Florence’s star witness in cases she prosecuted against several contractors who’d received millions of dollars in city work.

Madu cooperated with the DA and claimed that in exchange for steering work to favored vendors, he received bribes of hotel stays, Broadway show tickets, gifts, extravagant meals and work for a subcontractor he secretly controlled.

He was the sole cooperating witness in seven criminal cases that were announced at an April 2018 news conference in which Florence stood next to Vance.

Unknown to the defendants, on Feb. 13, 2015, Madu made an audiotaped statement to city 
Department of Investigation agents involved in the bribery case, during which he was placed under oath.

According to court papers reviewed by THE CITY, Madu told DOI “among other things that he broke no laws, and that he did not take gifts, things of value or bribes from contractors.”

In court papers, Florence denied deliberately withholding evidence in the bribery cases, but did not address the allegation regarding the Madu DOI tape. She did not immediately return a phone message from THE CITY.

The allegations threatened to unleash a stampede to throw out cases and convictions involving Madu and Florence.

The accusations also marked the latest strife for Vance, who faces calls for his resignation over his handling of some high-profile cases involving the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and family members of President Donald Trump.

Friday, April 20, 2018

DEP bribery scheme detailed


From NBC:

A former New York City Department of Environmental Protection employee was cuffed in a $165 million construction corruption scheme. Erica Byfield reports.

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Cy stops taking money from de Blasio's lawyers

From the Daily News:

By the time Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. met with the lawyer representing Mayor de Blasio in his year-old campaign finance probe of Hizzoner, the attorney’s firm and its partners had donated $70,000 to the top prosecutor.

But unlike Vance’s decision to return the donation of a lawyer representing Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. to avoid a conflict of interest, the DA kept the contributions from Kramer Levin Naftalis, the firm representing the mayor.

These donations by a law firm handling one of the DA’s most high-profile cases are yet another example of potential conflicts of interest that have dogged the DA in the last two weeks — scrutiny that prompted Vance to announce Sunday that he was suspending fund-raising.

Sunday, October 15, 2017

Questioning Cy's judgment

From NPR:

"If we could have prosecuted Harvey Weinstein for the conduct that occurred in 2015, we would have," said Karen Friedman Agnifilo, chief assistant district attorney.

But criminal attorney Matthew Galluzzo, who once worked in the DA's sex crimes unit, told The Associated Press he believed the audiotape, in which Weinstein acknowledges touching Gutierrez on the breast, could have been used to pursue a case.

"She can testify about what happened, and you've got him acknowledging he did something wrong," Galluzzo said.

Before this week, questions were also being raised about Vance's handling of a fraud investigation involving the Trump SoHo, a condo hotel built by the Bayrock Group. Some early buyers of units at the hotel sued Bayrock, arguing that they had been misled about the hotel's sales records.

The Manhattan DA's office had considered pursuing fraud charges against Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr., who played a big role in promoting the hotel. An investigation by The New Yorker, WNYC and ProPublica said prosecutors wanted to pursue a criminal case, but Vance said evidence to do so was lacking.

The report also noted that Vance had received a $32,000 campaign contribution from one of Trump's lawyers shortly after dropping the case. Vance had also received an earlier donation, which he had returned.

"It was improper for him to accept it in the first place. He responded by returning those donations and then apparently accepted them again after the fact," noted Jim Cohen, a professor at Fordham University School of Law.

Friday, March 17, 2017

DeBlasio skates after blaming lawyer

From DNA Info:

Mayor Bill de Blasio broke state law when he and his subordinates steered money towards Democratic state senate campaigns — but he can't be charged with a crime because his lawyer said it was OK, according to the Manhattan District Attorney's office.

"After an extensive investigation, notwithstanding the [Board of Elections'] view that the conduct here may have violated the Election Law, this office has determined that the parties involved cannot be appropriately prosecuted, given their reliance on the advice of counsel," DA Cyrus Vance.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan also concluded an investigation into the mayor's fundraising and determined on Thursday that no criminal charges would be brought.


Well that pretty much ends our chances of not having the Dope from Park Slope around for another 4 years. Paul Massey spoke with the Tribune recently, but he's running as a Republican in a Democratic town.

Friday, December 16, 2016

It's gone to the grand jury!

From the Daily News:

Federal and state grand juries have begun hearing testimony in criminal investigations of Mayor de Blasio’s fund-raising.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara is said to be presenting evidence in a probe of how de Blasio collected large sums of money for a since disbanded nonprofit organization called the Campaign for One New York.

The New York Times reported that Bharara's panel is examining whether the mayor or aides gave donors helpful city action in exchange for contributions in a half dozen matters. An explicit quid-pro-quo or excessive pressure to donate would be federal felonies.

Separately, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. has issued subpoenas and taken witness testimony in connection with additional large sums raised by de Blasio’s team in an attempt to switch the state Senate from Republican to Democratic control through upstate elections.

Vance is focused on whether de Blasio's routing of the money constituted an end-run misdemeanor violation of the state election law.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Multiple investigations into de Blasio fundraising


From the NY Post:

Mayor de Blasio and his top aides coordinated an illegal fundraising scheme to help elect Democrats to the state Senate in 2014, the top investigator at the state Board of Elections accuses in a blockbuster memo that recommends the DA investigate City Hall.

In the damning eight-page report, delivered to the elections board on Jan.4, enforcement chief Risa Sugarman said the actions of the mayor, his political team and his state democratic allies led to “willful and flagrant violations” of state law.

“I have determined that reasonable cause exists to believe a violation warranting criminal prosecution has taken place,” Sugarman wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.


From the Daily News:

The commissioners, during a closed-door vote, made the referral on Jan. 11, sources said, which is now part of a broader probe by the DA and Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office.

Sugarman’s memo paints a picture of a coordinated effort by the mayor and his allies — dubbed interchangeably as “Team de Blasio” and “Team Coordinated” — to deliberately circumvent legal campaign donation limits in three upstate races in what turned out to be an unsuccessful effort to help Democrats win control of the state Senate in 2014.

The memo did not spell out exactly who could be charged. Deliberately evading campaign donation limits would constitute a felony.

Unions like the powerful Service Employees International Union Local 1199, SEIU 32BJ, the state Nurse's Association, and the Communications Workers of America were among those who gave big amounts to the county committees though they never had before. Developers and powerful businessmen who had business before the city like supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis ($50,000) and Alexis Lodde ($100,000) also gave mega contributions to the county committees.

Sugarman wrote that by serving as “straw donors” that simply passed through the donations to the candidate campaigns, the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee and the two county committees may have also violated the law.


From the Daily News:

A key donor to Mayor de Blasio’s fund-raising was subpoenaed Thursday, as it became clear the growing investigation is zeroing in on whether his campaign broke rules pursuing checks from powerful interests seeking favors from City Hall, the Daily News has learned.

The Manhattan U.S. attorney and the Manhattan district attorney both demanded documents from an anti-horse carriage group that has steered hundreds of thousands of dollars to de Blasio in its effort to ban buggies from Central Park, according to a source familiar with the probe.

Supporters of that group, New Yorkers for Clean, Livable and Safe Streets, NYCLASS, have written checks totaling $125,000 to Campaign for One New York, a so-called “independent spending” organization de Blasio formed to support his pet causes.

Late Thursday, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. demanded documents dating as far back as 2013 from the group, which steered $100,000 to Campaign for One New York in March 2015 and hundreds of thousands more to the mayor’s 2013 campaign.


From the Daily News:

On its face, it makes no sense.

A handful of sophisticated New York developers write big campaign checks to rural backwoods political committees miles upstate.

Upon closer inspection, however, it all becomes clear.

The developers were told the money wasn’t meant to help elect some yahoo constable in Moosebreath Corners, N.Y. Instead, it would help Mayor de Blasio in his quixotic quest to flip the GOP-controlled state Senate to the Democrats.

And the developers who chose to give just happened to be seeking — or had in the past received — lucrative benefits from the de Blasio administration such as zoning changes and tax breaks.

All of this is now under investigation by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

You might as well bribe

From the Daily News:

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. on Sunday slammed toothless laws that make it tough for state prosecutors to go after corrupt New York politicians.

They are “out of touch with the reality” compared with other states that make it easier to go after crooked officials, he said on John Catsimatidis’ radio show on AM 970.

“It’s more difficult in New York State to prosecute a politician or the briber for bribery than it is to prosecute a sports promoter for bribery,” he said. “We sort of have a carveout in New York State for political bribery, which makes it, I think, simply out of touch with the reality of statutes around the country.”


I'm sure the lawmakers will get right on correcting this.

Friday, July 4, 2014

They faked it

From the NY Times:

A building inspector visited a scaffolding last summer on East 90th Street in Manhattan, where workers were restoring the exterior of an apartment building. The inspector noticed something amiss in the site’s safety log: The safety manager who had supposedly signed the log that day could not have done so; he had recently died.

That oddity led New York City officials to investigate, and on Wednesday criminal charges were filed against two companies that provide safety managers at construction sites. The companies, Avanti Building Consultants and NYCB Engineering Group, were accused of hiring unqualified people to pose as licensed site safety managers.

The companies hired people through Craigslist — hairdressers, short-order cooks, musicians, day laborers — to pretend to be safety managers, court papers said. In dozens of cases, the employees skipped the inspections and forged the signatures of real site safety managers on logs, the papers said.

The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., said the companies compromised safety at 43 sites in New York City over two years, mostly older scaffolded buildings where workers were restoring facades. Three managers and four employees were arrested on Wednesday.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Tax evasion pretty common

From the NY Times:

At the peak of the real estate boom, the owners of a four-story building with a couple of huge billboards in Times Square failed to report money that they received from renting the signs, evading tens of thousands of dollars a year in property taxes.

The owners went further than just omitting the billboard income; they appealed to the city for a reduction in taxes for six consecutive years. But after an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the owners paid $240,000 in back taxes as part of an agreement settling the matter.

On Wednesday, the grand jury that heard evidence in the case, as well as two others that resulted in indictments, issued an unusual report recommending a series of what it said were “desperately needed” changes to the city’s property tax system, including civil sanctions and stiffer penalties for landlords who file false documents and information.

The report suggests that this kind of tax evasion may be widespread, citing a survey that found that 60 of 100 property owners cited by the Buildings Department for improper permits had failed to report signage income to the Tax Commission.

“Reform is desperately needed,” the report said, to protect the integrity of the city’s tax system and to “maximize the tax receipts that are currently lawfully due.”

City officials, who testified extensively before the grand jury, said it was impossible to know how many of the city’s one million property owners were evading taxes by filing false income and expense statements with the Finance Department or the Tax Commission. But with $17 billion in property taxes collected in 2011, Glenn Newman, president of the Tax Commission, said “even a small amount of fraud can result in real money lost.”

Monday, September 26, 2011

City paid dead people's rent

From the Daily News:

A shocking new audit from city Controller John Liu discovered that city bureaucrats paid out $11.8 million in rent subsidies in recent years to nearly 4,000 people too dead to enjoy them.

Instead, their landlords or relatives cashed in.

"There's no excuse for losing this much money - management lapse, willful fraud or otherwise," Liu said in a statement.

His office turned its findings over to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. to determine if any crimes were committed.

City officials say they've already recouped $3.3 million of the posthumous profit - and vowed to collect the rest as soon as possible.

They say they had spotted some of the errors even before Liu flagged the screwups - and began implementing safeguards to make sure the dead are never again on the city dole.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Wills pleads not guilty

From the Daily News:

City Councilman Ruben Wills turned down a no-jail plea deal on a 14-year-old petty larceny case, preferring to take his chances with a trial that could end with jail time.

Wills was charged in 1996 with damaging the walls and stealing track lights and a fan from a client of the home renovation company he then ran.

He admitted all of this to the police, sources say. Prosecutors originally agreed to drop charges of petty larceny, third-degree criminal trespass and fourth-degree criminal mischief.

In exchange, Wills agreed to pay $3,000 to the victim, but Wills paid only $500, and began repeatedly skipping court dates.

At one point, he was "involuntarily" returned to court by the NYPD, where he promised to settle his case.

He promptly missed several more court dates, and an arrest warrant was issued.

Yesterday, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance offered a deal requiring that Wills admit to an unspecified misdemeanor, perform five days of community service and pay the long-overdue $2,500 restitution.

Wills refused to plead guilty to anything; an Aug. 17 trial date was set. If convicted, he faces up to a year in prison.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Too much crime, not enough punishment

Editorial from the Daily News:

New York City is overrun by habitual criminals who are degrading the quality of life without fear of punishment, according to astounding new data.

The state Division of Criminal Justice Services reports that a whopping 8,824 mopes had been convicted of five or more misdemeanors within the three years that ended Dec. 31. Some 1,600 of them had 10 or more convictions in the same time frame and 169 had 20 or more.

These people must be stopped. They are stealing, dealing drugs, vandalizing property and cycling through the Criminal Court revolving door largely unpunished. New Yorkers are lucky if they are off the street for more than a couple of days.

Commissioner Sean Byrne started collecting the numbers to get prosecutors and judges to come down harder on repeat misdemeanor offenders. Good luck with that. It has never worked before and the max they would face in any case is a year in jail.

Only a get-tough law will do the trick.

The Legislature - including the soft-on-crime Democratic-controlled Assembly - must finally deem repeat misdemeanants eligible for treatment as felons.

Ideally, the law would bump a fourth misdemeanor conviction up to a felony with hard time. But this is too much for the Assembly to bear. Mayor Bloomberg has called for setting the standard at a seventh conviction and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance says he would happily settle for pegging it at eight or more serious misdemeanors in five years.

Enough is enough. Too many people are being victimized.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

DA focusing on small offenses

From the NY Post:

In a ramped-up effort to thwart subway criminals and keep repeat offenders off the streets, Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has pushed for higher bail and harsher penalties for small-time offenses like cellphone snatching and pickpocketing, his office told The Post.

In a policy sea change, prosecutors in the new Crime Strategies Unit have been demanding hard time for crooks based on their history as serial offenders, and judges have been granting those requests since May.

Before, prosecutors would ask for bail based upon the crime a person was accused of at the time, resulting in slap-on-the-wrist punishments that let crooks strike again, officials said.

Stopping subway thieves has been a massive focus of the program.

"Crimes committed within the New York City transit system threaten the safety of all passengers of public transportation," Vance told The Post.

He said his department "analyzes crime trends across Manhattan, including in our transit system. Our office takes all crimes seriously, because we know that low-level offenses often lead to more serious crimes."

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Manhattan DA won't touch Bloomberg

From the Daily News:

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. last week laid out in his clearest language yet how Mayor Bloomberg may have broken campaign finance law in funding his reelection bid last year.

Somehow, though, Vance doesn't see it as a case worth pursuing.

State law says housekeeping money can only be used for day-to-day party activities, not to benefit any specific candidate. Haggerty, though, claims he spoke directly with Bloomberg about how it would help the mayor's campaign.

Here's where it gets sticky for Bloomberg.

Haggerty's lawyers say that if Bloomberg's $1.1 million was truly a donation to the Independence Party, then prosecutors can't claim it was stolen just because they don't like how the party spent it.

In last week's filing, though, Vance scoffs at the idea Bloomberg's money was a donation to the party.

"This argument seeks to mischaracterize the nature of the transferred funds," prosecutors wrote. "Haggerty deceived Bloomberg and his staff into sending the money to pay for a fictitious ballot security operation."

If Bloomberg's $1.1 million wasn't really a party donation, it should presumably have been reported as part of his campaign spending.

"That's the conundrum here," said Dennis Vacco, one of Haggerty's lawyers. "It's either a contribution or it's an expenditure."

Bloomberg even filed a state Board of Elections form called a CF-16 promising that "all financial activity related to my campaign, including my own," would go through his official Bloomberg for Mayor 2009 campaign.

That's not what happened, though.

Vance and his office will not comment on why - or whether - they haven't tried to pursue a case against Bloomberg.

However, the law about housekeeping accounts is mushy and much-abused.

Bloomberg has some very high-powered lawyers who could presumably explain to Vance how all their decisions fell just inside the loopholes.

A freshman prosecutor with big visions for the future, taking over from a legend like Robert Morgenthau, might have balked at starting his tenure by bringing a difficult case against a popular mayor.


Popular? The guy almost lost.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Bribe maker gets 2 years in prison

From the NY Post:

A Long Island crane company official will spend two to six years behind bars after he was found guilty of bribing the city’s former chief crane inspector.

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance announced the sentencing today of Michael Sackaris, 50, the owner of Nu-Way Crane Service in Suffolk County from 2002 to 2007.

"Fatal crane accidents have cut short too many lives in New York City," said Vance. "Bribing a city employee -- particularly one charged with ensuring the public's safety -- is more than a criminal affront to the taxpayers who expect honest services from the city's workforce. It put New Yorkers at an unnecessary and unacceptable risk."

Vance also said city residents were "fortunate that no one was directly injured by the defendant's actions."

Sackaris gave about 20 cash bribes, from $200 to $500 each time, between December 2000 and January 2008 to James Delayo, who served as the buildings department’s acting chief inspector of cranes and derricks, Vance said.

Delayo was sentenced in June to two to six years in prison for taking bribes to fake inspection and licensing exam results.