N.Y.C. Inspector Sentenced for Faking Safety Tests

The case against the inspector, Saverio F. Todaro, who pleaded guilty in March to mail fraud, environmental crimes and making false statements, and the breadth and simplicity of his offenses revealed the city’s system of oversight and enforcement as strained at best and raised questions about whether such improper conduct was more widespread.

Mr. Todaro never performed hundreds of tests but filed false reports and failed to submit laboratory reports in some instances.

At the sentencing in United States District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Todaro, a wizened 68-year-old, sat hunched over in a wheelchair, breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank and sometimes holding his hand to his head as his lawyer argued for a sentence of home detention.

The lawyer, Steven M. Statsinger, acknowledged that his client’s crimes had been “unusually severe,” because they occurred over a long period of time — more than seven years — and had the potential to affect so many people. But he cited his severe health problems and his mentally retarded 40-year-old son; Mr. Todaro, he said, had a very close relationship with his son and helped care for him.

But the judge, Kimba M. Wood, told Mr. Todaro before she sentenced him that only his son’s needs and his own poor health kept her from giving him a “much, much higher” sentence. The prison term she meted out, five years and three months, was at the top of the range of advisory guidelines.

She also said he had concocted an elaborate web of lies to evade detection and avoid prosecution.

“The inventiveness of your lies,” she said, “was outstripped only by the callousness with which you put the health and lives of New York City children and adults at risk.”

Judge Wood ordered Mr. Todaro, a certified asbestos investigator, to pay more than $450,000 in forfeiture, fines and restitution.

In a brief and somewhat disjointed statement, Mr. Todaro apologized and asked the judge not to send him to prison.

“Basically, look, I’m sorry what I did,” he said. “I’m sorry the effect it’s had on my family, my relatives, clients, everybody. I feel really bad about it. And it’s been on my mind.

“I am sympathetic to everything I’ve done, the people I hurt, but if I go to jail my wife cannot keep the house up, my kid wouldn’t be taken care of. And what else can I say?”

The prosecutor in the case said in court papers that in all but a few instances, it was impossible to say whether the fake reports masked real environmental hazards. “It is unknown whether people will get sick as a result of his conduct,” wrote Anne C. Ryan, an assistant in the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan. “Among other things, asbestos-related diseases can take decades to develop.”

Judge Wood told Mr. Todaro that the health of the city’s children and adults was heavily dependent on the honesty of inspectors. “Your sentence needs to send a message to all city inspectors that they are guardians of the public trust and that dishonesty in inspections will be severely punished,” she said.

William V. Lometti, who is in charge of the criminal investigative division of the Environmental Protection Agency in New York, said the sentence did that.

In July, in response to the case, the city announced a range of reforms to increase oversight and enforcement.

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Debate Continues Over Deutsche Bank Tower Demolition

But in a hint of what will follow the demolition, the construction manager for the dismantling, Bovis Lend Lease, is involved in a courtroom free-for-all over tens of millions of dollars with the state agency that hired it.

Bovis claimed in a complaint filed last month in State Supreme Court in Manhattan that it had been shortchanged at least $80 million for work it was ordered to perform at the site.

But in a court filing on June 23, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation excoriated the construction company for having the “gall” to seek extra compensation and profit, despite the project’s “being more than three and a half years behind schedule and despite tens of millions of dollars of costs and damages” incurred by the agency from long delays and an August 2007 blaze in which two firefighters died.

“There are two Bovises,” Avi Schick, chairman of the development corporation, said. “One that speaks with contrition and accepts responsibility for its safety lapses on the site, and then there’s the other Bovis with its hand in the taxpayer’s pocket.”

Bovis declined to discuss the specifics of the claims.

“We are pleased with the progress being made to bring the building down,” said Mary Costello, a spokeswoman for Bovis, “and look forward to the completion of the project and to the resolution of any open issues with L.M.D.C."

There are some facts on which the two sides agree. The 41-story Deutsche Bank tower at 130 Liberty Street sustained a 15-story gash on the north side of the building during the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center. The development corporation bought the building in 2004 and hired Bovis the following year to decontaminate and demolish it under an $81 million contract.

The costs of demolition are covered by a combination of government money and $100 million from insurers, with the total expected to run about $300 million.

Regulators imposed a complicated protocol for cleaning the tower, which they suspected had been contaminated by asbestos and other toxic substances. But from the beginning, the work was plagued by delays, accidents and financial disputes.

In its lawsuit, Bovis said the work had been more difficult and expensive than anticipated, in large part because of “outside regulatory interference and changed work methods imposed by government regulators.”

Bovis claimed that it had repeatedly been ordered by the agency to do work outside the scope of its contract, for which it should be compensated “with a reasonable markup for overhead and profit.”

The development corporation countered that Bovis had assumed the risk of regulatory scrutiny when it signed the contract. Yet, the corporation added, Bovis was paid $61 million more than the contract called for after the contractor threatened to walk off the job if its demands were not met. Furthermore, the development corporation said that the Bovis lawsuit was premature because both sides had agreed in 2007 to defer any litigation until demolition was finished.

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