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KINGSBOROUGH
COMMUNITY COLLEGE
10 COURIER LIFE, MAY 24–30, 2019 M BR B G
Coney Island
conspiracy
Three women arrested for allegedly
accepting bribes in housing scheme
CAUGHT: District Attorney Eric Gonzalez announced the arrest of three women who allegedly
accepted bribes in exchange for doctoring applications to a Coney Island Mitchell Lama
housing, which they spent largely on designer handbags and jewelry. Photos by Colin Mixson
BY COLIN MIXSON
Three women were arrested on May 21
for allegedly forging documents that allowed
affordable-housing applicants to
bypass a decades-long waiting list for a
Coney Island cooperative in exchange
for a whopping $874,000 in bribes.
The suspects allegedly spent their
ill-gotten proceeds on jewelry, furs, designer
bags, and Florida beach-front
properties, while law-abiding families
desperate for affordable housing got
the shaft, according to District Attorney
Eric Gonzalez.
“This is about working class families
being deprived of the affordable
housing they’ve been waiting for, and
being victimized by the people that
managed the availability of this very
limited housing stock,” Gonzalez said.
The defendants — ages 71, 66, and
38 years old — served variously on the
board of directors and at the management
offi ce for Luna Park Housing Corporation
— a massive, fi ve-building
Mitchell Lama housing roughly 6,000
people — where they conspired to leverage
their authority and expertise in
the cooperative’s application process
to forge documents in exchange for
massive bribes, including one $120,000
buy off to secure a two-bedroom apartment
at well below market rate.
In several instances, the defendants
altered documents including birth and
marriage certifi cates, passports, and
utility bills to fool the Department of
Housing Preservation and Development
into believing that the suspect’s
TRAIL OF BLING: Gonzalez said the women
spent the money on handbags and jewelry.
benefactors were related and lived
with Luna Park lease holders.
As a result, unqualifi ed applicants
were able to nab highly sought-after
affordable housing, while hundreds of
families continued to wait on applications
dating back to the early ’90s, according
to Gonzalez.
The prosecutor said that the 18 false
applications for apartments — altogether
valued at $5 million — included
in the charges were likely only the tip
of the iceberg, and that the women may
have committed many more forgeries
during their tenure at the co-op.
“We believe that this was the norm,
not the exception,” said Gonzalez. “It’s
an open secret that this scheme has
been in place for many years.”
With criminal charges fi led against
the suspects, the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development is
expected to investigate the doctored
applications, and may take steps to penalize,
or evict bogus tenants, according
to the prosecutor.
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