WHAT HEELS: Moscow On The Hudson
A group of Russians running 38 daycare centers in Brooklyn and Staten Island calling itself “the Congregation” conspired with city employees at the Administration for Children’s Services, Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and Human Resources Administration to siphon $18 million from a NYC program that pays child-care costs to enable low-income women to work outside the home. Four daycare operators and seven city workers, were charged with conspiring to pay or receive bribes; all but one were also charged with conspiracy to commit fraud, reports The New York Times:
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said at a news conference said that the bribes, which another official put at significantly more than $100,000, were paid to city workers to “essentially look the other way and grease the gravy train.”
The workers helped the day care centers bill the city for children who were not enrolled or for services never provided, and allowed them to remain open despite flouting rules on floor space, background checks of employees and teacher-child ratios, a criminal complaint said.
The complaint appears to suggest that more than the seven city workers took payments and that some of them cooperated with investigators, secretly recording meetings where bribes were made. …
The bribes ranged from $150 to several thousand dollars. The years-long scheme began to unravel when one of the daycare operators tried to bribe a city worker by “forgetting” a ring in her office and misinterpreted her protest as a complaint that the ring was too small. That worker filed a complaint that tipped investigators to the conspiracy.
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