A safety inspector licensed to make critical assessments of asbestos and lead risks in buildings and at construction sites across the city made a stunning admission in federal court: Despite filing hundreds of reports saying his tests had found no danger, he had not performed a single one of the tests.
The inspector, Saverio F. Todaro, 68, submitted clean asbestos or lead test results for well over 200 buildings and apartments, including some that were demolished or renovated to make way for publicly financed projects under the Bloomberg administration’s affordable-housing program, according to people briefed on the matter and court papers.
The number of potential victims of Mr. Todaro’s fraud, which spanned at least a decade, loomed so large that the Manhattan United States attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, created a separate Web page to comply with a law requiring it to notify victims.
His admissions late last month have raised troubling questions about whether such conduct might be more widespread, and it has led to an expanding inquiry focused on some aspects of the work of asbestos and lead inspectors in the city.
“Todaro’s guilty plea is not the end of the story,” said the Manhattan United States attorney, Preet Bharara. “This investigation is very much ongoing.”
The investigation, in part, seeks to determine whether he conspired with others — taking bribes to fashion crude forgeries and mask his failure to conduct any tests — or whether he acted alone for other reasons, officials said.
The breadth of his crimes, the simplicity of the schemes and the apparent ease with which he got away with them over the years also suggest that the city’s oversight is strained, at best.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said one official briefed on the matter and on the issues facing city and federal regulators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing. “We just don’t know how big the iceberg is.”
Because Mr. Todaro never did the tests in question, and because in more than a dozen instances the buildings involved have been torn down and replaced with new ones, or gutted and renovated, it is impossible in some cases to determine if proper tests would have revealed potentially dangerous levels of lead or asbestos.
At the same time, federal and city officials have not made public the precise number and location of the buildings involved, or disclosed specifics of what they think took place in each instance. While the city’s health department has reviewed 17 cases in which Mr. Todaro performed lead tests, it remains unclear whether city officials plan to conduct any other reviews or retesting.
But the stakes are unquestionably high.
The Environmental Protection Agency has found that the long-term effects of lead exposure in children and adults can be severe. Inhaling asbestos can cause lung disease and cancer.
Several city agencies sought to play down the dangers.
City regulators have found no evidence that either the fraud or risks are widespread, said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
“We can always look for new ways to improve our process,” he said. “D.E.P. is going to start increasing audits, which is the right step to ensure inspections are being completed properly.”
But, in addition to the continuing investigation that grew out of the charges against Mr. Todaro, there are now six other unrelated federal cases under way exploring allegations of similar practices in the New York City area. Some 1,500 people hold city or federal certifications to test for lead or asbestos in the area.
One line of inquiry for investigators in the case involving Mr. Todaro is whether any building owners, management firms or contractors for whom he or other inspectors worked paid bribes for the bogus inspection reports. Officials say substantial sums of money could have been saved by allowing the demolition of buildings without performing expensive asbestos abatement.
Indeed, several current and former law enforcement officials and industry experts underscored that the city’s construction industry, and in particular the demolition and asbestos abatement sectors, have a rich history of corruption.
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