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Pair Charged With Taking Bribes To Keep Crack Out Of Public Housing
By
Garth Johnston
Published Apr 2, 2012
Modified Apr 2, 2012
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Apr 2, 2012
Modified Apr 2, 2012
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And that goes for public housing, too. Feds have charged the building manager and superintendent of a troubled Staten Island apartment complex with illegally taking thousands in bribes to help prospective tenants jump up the list. But they weren't doing it for the money, they can reportedly be heard on tape explaining. It was all to keep the community safe!
Today, prosecutors announced the arrest of building manager Tanya Green, 43, and super, Juan Gomez, 51, accusing them in a federal court complaint of running a scheme to make dough off of the 70 federally subsidized Section 8 units in Elbee Gardens at 1950 Clove Road. Apparently it wasn't even hard to get the pair to fess up. According to court papers, Gomez in particular was quite upfront telling a CI in one recording that "we are trying to get nice people in here. We don't want, believe me. We get the worst garbage from Park Hill, Arlington. You got women with four babies and three boyfriends, crack, (urinating) in the hallways, you know what the thing is, be careful what they wish for...I've been a super for over 25 years, that is the best way to do it. The best, I don't care how you slice it."
And he went on: "The people they get like jealous. Ooh you're making money. It's not that we are making money. It's that we want some nice people in here, bottom line." And just in case we weren't clear what he was saying, he added later on: "Some people come in with three times the amount of money, but they were crack dealers and we said no, because we want good people in here."
The pair were eventually caught because of some poor math. According to a SI Advance source "Green would backdate the applications, to make it look like prospective tenants were higher on the waiting list, but she would forget to do the math when it came to calculating some applicants' ages, the source said. The tenants' dates of birth didn't match the ages they listed in some cases, and that raised red flags."
Both Green and Gomez have been arraigned in Brooklyn Federal Court on charges of conspiracy to solicit bribes concerning a program receiving federal funds, and could face up to 10 years in prison. They've both been released on $100,000 bail.
Tagged
hud
juan gomez
nycha
public housing
staten island
tanya green
Garth Johnston
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