United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jay Clayton, along with a plethora of other officials, announced that every single one of the 70 employees who work for the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) who were arrested and charged in February 2024 have been convicted of bribery, fraud, or extortion crimes. Out of the 70 individuals who were charged with taking bribes in exchange for giving out NYCHA repair contracts, three of them were convicted by a jury of their peers following trials.
A total of 56 defendants opted to plead guilty to felony offenses, and 11 others pled guilty to misdemeanor charges. The sentencing for these individuals is currently ongoing, but could result in as much as 48 months behind bars. The defendants were, altogether, responsible for taking over $2.1 million in bribes in exchange for repair contracts worth an estimated $15 million.
Part of the punishment for their crimes includes paying $2.1 million in restitution to the NYCHA and over $2 million in criminal proceeds. “Today’s plea of the 70th and final NYCHA pay-for-play contracting scheme defendant marks an important milestone in one of the largest single-day corruption cases in the history of the Justice Department,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton went on to say about the matter.
According to a report published by the Justice Department in late November of 2025, Clayton then said, “All 70 charged defendants have now been convicted for attempting to criminally leverage the contracting process of work for affordable housing for New Yorkers to line their own pockets. NYCHA residents deserve better. New Yorkers deserve better. This broad and swift action demonstrates our Office’s commitment to combatting corruption in our nation’s largest public housing authority—home to 1 in every 17 New York City residents.”
New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber also provided a statement concerning the fate of the 70 NYCHA employees, saying, “Today, the last of the 70 NYCHA employees charged with bribery and extortion in connection with the awarding of micro-purchase contracts pled guilty, closing the chapter on an investigation in which DOI and our federal partners exposed widespread corruption that touched almost one-third of NYCHA’s 365 developments in each of the five boroughs.”
She then spoke about how all of the defendants in the case, many of whom worked as supervisors for the agency, have now taken responsibility for the separate schemes that involved over $15 million in no-bid contracts that were awarded after receiving over $2.1 million in bribes. “To date, approximately $2 million in restitution to NYCHA and nearly $2 million in forfeiture has been ordered. Equally important, DOI’s 14 recommendations to improve controls with respect to NYCHA’s micro-purchase contracting have been implemented – three of which were similar to DOI’s 2021 recommendations that were rejected by NYCHA. I thank the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and our federal law enforcement partners for their commitment to thwart corruption that drains public housing resources, and NYCHA for the implementation of much-needed contracting reforms.”
NYCHA is the largest housing authority in the United States, providing housing for 1 out of 17 New Yorkers in 335 developments all over the city. The agency receives over $1.5 billion in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development each year. Repairs are typically purchased through a bidding process. At the time of the incidents noted above, staff members for NYCHA were allowed to pick contractors of their choosing without accepting multiple bids.
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This process was faster than usual procurement process. The defendants in the case were all employees of NYCHA during the time the bribes were made and demanded to receive cash in exchange for the NYCHA contracts. Contractors were required to either pay the bribe up front or after the work was completed. The NYCHA workers involved in the scheme typically required 10% to 20% of the contract value, which was somewhere in the range of $500 and $2,000 depending on the size of the contract. Some of the defendants demanded more.