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.

View the original article here

Inspector Says He Faked Data in New York Building Tests

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.

“It sounds like a disaster,” said Daniel J. Castleman, the former chief assistant in the office of the previous Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, where he supervised corruption cases focusing on the demolition and asbestos abatement industries. “Obviously there are always going to be people who will take a short cut in order to make money, whether it’s in the inspection of lead or asbestos or concrete or steel.”

The case bears some similarities to one brought by the district attorney last year, which exposed widespread fraud in the concrete testing industry and led to criminal convictions and cost the city and private developers millions of dollars for retesting.

The precise targets of the growing investigation are unclear, and several people briefed on the matter said it may be some time before determinations are made as to whether others will be charged.

View the original article here

Inspector Says He Faked Data in New York Building Tests

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.

View the original article here

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.

View the original article here