Frank Carone, former chief of staff to New York Mayor Eric Adams, has been arrested by the FBI in connection with an alleged bribery-related scheme.
Carone’s brother Anthony Carone and two others, a hotel owner and a hotel employee, have also been arrested.
Charges are being filed in New York’s Eastern District.
Spokespeople from the FBI and the prosecutor’s office had no comment.
One of Carone’s attorneys, Arthur Aidala, said in a statement his client had been indicted and called Wednesday a “sad day for our criminal justice system.”
“It epitomizes the government first finding a target and then spending three years and enormous taxpayer resources to find a crime,” Aidala said. “After intense investigations over many years, all the government was able to come up with was this weak indictment based on purely circumstantial evidence that’s not worth the paper upon which it’s printed.”
“Everyone who knows the Carone brothers knows they do things the right way; that’s why it took over three years for them to come up with something that they could put on paper,” the attorney added. “We look forward to appearing before a jury and obtaining a swift acquittal.”
Carone stepped down from his City Hall post in December 2022. Adams said the departure was part of a prior agreement with his longtime friend, whom he says he solicited to help lay the foundation for his administration.
At the time, Carone called any potential accusations “baseless” and suggested that any scrutiny was a result of his political associations and success and “stereotypical assumptions” as “an Italian American who grew up in the streets of Canarsie and to this day still speaks with a full Brooklyn accent.”
In the indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that from June 2022 to December 2023, Frank Carone, Anthony Carone, Crystal Chen and Yan Po Zhu “devised and executed a scheme to exploit the City’s migrant crisis for profit.”
Each of the men has pleaded not guilty.
In the indictment prosecutors allege Frank Carone, in his capacity as chief of staff, agreed to accept a series of bribe payments from Zhu and Chen through his brother Anthony.
“In exchange, F. Carone agreed to steer a multimillion-dollar Emergency Shelter Contract to the Microtel owned by ZHU and managed by Chen. To conceal the criminal nature of the scheme, ZHU directed the bribe payments to the Law Firm #2 Account controlled by A. Carone,” the indictment read.
Frank Carone, according to the indictment, then disbursed the funds for his personal benefit, including paying personal credit card bills and transferring funds to a bank account of which he was the sole beneficial owner.
“In total, Zhu and Chen paid approximately $120,000 to F. Carone in exchange for an Emergency Shelter Contract for the Microtel, which was laundered through “Law Firm #2 Account” by A. Carone and his co-defendants,” according to the indictment.
Read the full article here
