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'We were the victim': Brooklyn shelter's new CEO speaks after corruption scandal
By
Ryan Kost
Published Oct 2, 2026
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Ryan Kost / Gothamist
By
Ryan Kost
Published Oct 2, 2026
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The head of a Brooklyn nonprofit at the center of a federal corruption case says the group lacked the basic financial and compliance infrastructure to manage homeless shelters even as its city contracts ballooned during the migrant crisis.
Still, she said, the care it provided was never in question.
“Shelter was very new to [them],” said Frances Pierre, who joined BHRAGS Home Care as the chief operating and strategic officer in May 2024 and was named chief executive officer this month after serving six months on an interim basis. “They were primarily home care. So I came in on a very different assignment.”
Pierre spoke with Gothamist at length for the first time after her appointment, detailing the organization’s rapid growth as a shelter provider and how corruption charges against its former leaders affected the nonprofit.
In March, federal prosecutors charged the group’s former executive director, Roberto Samedy, and former board chair, Jean Ronald Tirelus, with embezzling more than $1.3 million from BHRAGS. They also allege, in court documents, that the two steered business to companies controlled by two co-defendants in exchange for bribes and kickbacks. All four have pleaded not guilty; attorneys representing the men either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
Six months later, BHRAGS has new leadership and a smaller portfolio and has agreed to years of oversight by an independent monitor to be selected by the city’s Department of Investigation. Still, city records show the group holds one contract worth more than $100 million with the city for homeless shelter operations in Brooklyn. Another worth about $50 million is pending the city comptroller’s approval. Records also show the city continued to give BHRAGS contracts even as warning signs mounted and officials flagged their own concerns about its management.
Pierre described BHRAGS as a victim of the alleged scheme and said she’d seen no evidence that anyone else with the nonprofit was involved.
“The quality of work that BHRAGS does, it has never been in question,” she said.
Pierre, a former associate commissioner of shelter operations for New York City’s Department of Homeless Services, said that by the time she arrived, BHRAGS was already running nine city shelters. They were all funded by emergency contracts driven by the sudden arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants.
Though BHRAGS received the contracts, “what they didn’t really have was the infrastructure,” Pierre said. She noted the organization had no chief financial officer, procurement director or chief compliance officer. “It wasn’t until I came on board that they really even understood how to get contracts registered.”
Up until that point, BHRAGS’ main focus, for decades, had been home care, which Pierre described as a very different sort of business.
“It’s cut and dry. It’s home care. You’re going in the home. You’re seeing clients,” she said.
Shelters, she said, are “a different beast.” Providers need to manage security, food, staff and other essentials. And the funding only comes once the provider has submitted invoices. “No one really gives you the manual,” Pierre said.
Asked whether the organization had taken on too many contracts too quickly, Pierre didn’t answer directly. BHRAGS, she said, is “always looking” to diversify its portfolio, and, at the time, the city was looking for organizations willing to help shelter the influx of migrants.
“Sometimes you put things together rather quickly before you put systems in place,” Pierre said.
Growth amid concerns
The migrant crisis began in spring 2022, and BHRAGS’ first emergency shelter contract, initially worth $4.6 million, began that October. Less than two years later, it was operating nine shelters under emergency contracts that would ultimately be worth a combined $185 million, according to a Gothamist review of city records.
Early signs of trouble emerged as the number of contracts grew. In December 2023, Fort NYC Security, a company BHRAGS had hired to provide services for some of its shelters, took the nonprofit to court, alleging it had been underpaid and pressured into a profit-sharing deal. BHRAGS, under the leadership of former director Samedy, disputed that account in court.
Fort Security, which is tied up in a federal corruption probe, is listed as the address for BHRAGS in a $94 million city contract.
Ryan Kost/Gothamist
By March 2024, the city had stepped into BHRAGS’ dealings with the security firm, directing the nonprofit to hold back payments to Fort, according to a lawsuit Fort later filed against the city.
The Department of Social Services intervened further in September 2024, placing BHRAGS on a corrective action plan after a review “raised concerns about governance and capacity,” a copy of the plan obtained by Gothamist through a public records request shows. Around the same time, the Department of Homeless Services also raised concerns about BHRAGS with the city’s Department of Investigation, ultimately setting off a chain of events that led to the federal charges.
Still, even as all this played out, the city kept working with BHRAGS, and in 2025, the organization won its largest contract yet, $115 million over five years to shelter single adults in Brooklyn. Unlike its earlier shelter contracts, this one went through a competitive process. A second competitive contract for a commercial hotel program worth $50.6 million over three years is still awaiting the comptroller’s approval.
Pierre said the organization hasn’t received any payment on the new contracts — they both began July 1 — though it continues to cover food, security and other costs at its shelters.
David Giffen, the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said it’s the city’s responsibility to make sure shelter providers are following the law.
“When they fail to do so it just fuels NIMBYism and cynicism about the shelter system,” he said. “The need outpacing the capacity to meet that need is kind of the story of homelessness response in NYC.”
Fallout from the corruption probe
Following the scandal, the city cut BHRAGS’ portfolio. The organization handed its four Queens shelters to other providers this summer, and it was already due to relinquish its Bronx site, Pierre said. It now runs four shelters, all in Brooklyn.
Pierre wouldn’t say where they were located, but one is a roughly 400-bed shelter on Third Street near the Gowanus Canal. Giffen said that facility now provides some of the city’s assessment of bed capacity after the city shut the massive 30th Street intake shelter in Manhattan earlier this summer.
Samedy, Pierre’s predecessor, was officially terminated in July and was paid his “leave and sick leave balances,” according to a monitoring agreement the organization signed with the investigation department in August. The agreement prohibits any further payments to Samedy or Tirelus.
Under the agreement, BHRAGS will have to pay for a monitor, chosen by the investigation department, who will oversee its operations for at least four years. Pierre said the monitor is not yet in place. In the meantime, city lawyers, the investigation department and the Mayor's Office of Contract Services have been overseeing certain decisions. Two board members stepped down amid the scrutiny of the past several months, and city staff screened and interviewed their replacements before they joined.
Separately, BHRAGS received more than $500,000 in City Council discretionary funding in recent years, most of it at the request of Councilmember Farah Louis. The councilmember has not been accused of wrongdoing.
Asked about the discretionary funding, Pierre said any money the organization received paid for services that had already been delivered. Louis’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
The fallout from the corruption probe has been hard on the organization, Pierre said. Losing five shelters stung. And keeping staff morale up was “definitely challenging.”
“Although BHRAGS was the victim,” she said, “it didn’t feel like we were a victim.”
The hardest part has been knowing that people will think of corruption when they think of the organization, Pierre added.
“I want the brand to be, ‘Wow, BHRAGS, you’re talking about the one that allegedly had that issue, but they do really good work.’”
As for what comes next, Pierre is already looking toward new opportunities, including permanent and supportive housing and services for older New Yorkers.
“I always think of the continuum of care, right?” she said. “Whatever we can do to help the community overall.”
Tagged
Politics
homelessness
new york city
Ryan Kost
Ryan Kost is a reporter on the day-of news desk, where he covers breaking news and writes enterprise stories about jails, courts, prosecutors and government accountability. His work focuses on the public institutions that shape life in New York. Before joining the newsroom, he lead a multi-part investigation with Columbia Journalism Investigations and New York Focus into how New York prosecutors handle wrongful conviction claims. He's also been a staff writer at The San Francisco Chronicle, The Associated Press and The Oregonian. Got a tip? Signal: ryankost.20
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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