In February of this year, the Southern District Federal Prosecutors, in collaboration with multiple law enforcement agencies, arrested 70 current and retired employees of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), accusing them of accepting bribes from small contractors over the past 10 years by abusing their power in overseeing government building maintenance projects.
On July 10th, one of the Asian defendants, Jaime Lan, pleaded guilty to one count of bribery and agreed to pay a fine of $27,000. Lan, who is 57 years old, served as an NYCHA employee from 2016 to 2021 and is scheduled for sentencing on October 17th.
According to the indictment, Lan received over $10,000 in bribes during his tenure at NYCHA. For instance, in July 2016, while overseeing non-competitive orders at a government building in Manhattan, Lan took bribes amounting to 10% of the contract value from contractors. Each contract was typically $3,000, with an average bribe of $300. Between January 2019 and September 2020, the same contractor received at least 24 non-competitive contracts at the government building, with Lan receiving around $400 in bribes for each contract.
Normally, the NYCHA does not require public bidding for small maintenance contracts valued below $10,000. Building managers or assistant managers can choose contractors themselves, and NYCHA only pays for the work after completion. However, non-competitive orders, while streamlining the process, also provide opportunities for misconduct.
In total, there are 70 defendants in this case, accused of collectively accepting over $2 million in bribes over a decade, involving contract amounts totaling $13 million and impacting over 100 government buildings across the five boroughs, representing more than a third of all 335 government buildings. Following the exposure of the case, the Housing Authority stated that they will change their procedures, centralizing small maintenance projects previously under individual supervisors to prevent future incidents of individuals abusing power for personal gain.