Con Ed supervisors charged in kickback scheme

‘We don’t expect our employees to take bribes and we don’t expect our contractors to offer them.’

— Con Ed spokesman
Robert McGee

By N. Clark Judd

Federal prosecutors have charged 11 former Con Edison supervisors with soliciting and taking kickbacks from a contractor to artificially inflate the cost of several construction projects in New York City and split the proceeds. The high-voltage power line now being pulled through the Riverdale- Kingsbridge area may have been one of them.

A Con Ed spokesman, Robert McGee, identified the contractor as Felix Associates, a firm that does gas line and electrical work on construction projects, including the high-voltage power line, and which has had several Con Ed contracts in the past.

Mr. McGee said that agreements with Felix Associates have been terminated. The 10 Con Ed employees still working at the utility when affidavits supporting their arrests were unsealed in mid-January have been fired.

“We don’t expect our employees to take bribes and we don’t expect our contractors to offer them,” Mr. McGee said on Feb. 23.

Con Ed officials first identified Felix Associates to the Westchester County Business Journal.

Messages left at Felix Associates were not returned.

According to court filings, Brendan Maher, 30, approached a firm last year and told its president he was looking for money. The firm — which Mr. McGee identified as Felix Associates — had just won a contract for “the installation of oil static pipes and high-voltage electrical lines which were to run from Manhattan, through the Bronx, and up to Yonkers.” Mr. Maher was a chief construction inspector responsible for overseeing construction projects in the city and checking contractors’ invoices for accuracy.

The description of that contract also accurately describes the highvoltage power line now being built, called the M29, which will connect substations in Westchester and Upper Manhattan. Mr. McGee declined to comment and the spokesman for Mr. Campbell, Robert Nardoza, could not comment by press time.

Long high-voltage power line projects are subject to public review and approval from the Public Service Commission. According to PSC documents available online, the M29 project is the only one of its type ongoing from Westchester to Manhattan.

Federal prosecutors say they have an Oct. 2 recording of Mr. Maher accepting a $1,000 kickback from the firm’s president in a Riverdale parking lot. Federal prosecutors never identified the cooperating witness, who, according to court documents, was arrested in September.

The Oct. 2 kickback was one of several that prosecutors accuse Mr. Maher of taking in locations throughout the city, and it was supposed to be for $5,000. “I appreciate it,” said the cooperating witness wearing a wire, according to court documents.

“I appreciate all you’re doing for me. I have a big problem with cash.”

The witness wanted to pay Mr. Maher by check, court filings say.

“No sweat,” Mr. Maher said, according to federal agents. “Like you said … as long as you guys know what’s what, I don’t have a problem.”

Court documents indicate that Mr. Maher agreed to inflate the bills Felix Associates sent to Con Ed for the power line project in exchange for 10 percent of the proceeds from the scheme. As of his alleged October rendezvous in Riverdale, prosecutors say Mr. Maher had worked up over $200,000.

Prosecutors say similar schemes were ongoing throughout Westchester and New York City, and payments were made as far apart as the parking lot of the Westchester Marriot Hotel in Tarrytown and the World’s Fair Marina in Queens, as well as several other locations in the Bronx.

The other Con Ed supervisors arrested were Thomas Fetter, 60, a construction representative who had retired before his arrest; Rocco Fassacesia, 58, and Paul Sanabria, 59, construction managers; Abraham Panagi, 58, Kevin Cook, 52, James Coffin, 54, Richard Giannetto, 55, and Anthony Villano, 54, senior specialists; and Richard Zebler, 49, Leonard DiRoma, 58, and Mr. Maher, chief construction inspectors.

Mr. Villano, indicted for accepting kickbacks on another project, once vowed to give a contractor a project inspector who wouldn’t interrupt the flow of work with too many questions, court documents say.

“I’m gonna try and give you this guy,” he allegedly said, in a profanity-laced exchange prosecutors say they have on tape.

Mr. Villano allegedly called the inspector in question a name offensive to anyone who knows Yiddish.

Work on the high-voltage line in Westchester was delayed Jan. 15, the day after the arrests were announced, and is expected to resume March 2, Mr. McGee said.

Work in Riverdale, where Con Ed is now pulling cables through the trenches that Felix Associates workers have already dug, was apparently unaffected.

Court documents do not identify Felix Associates by name, and a spokesman for the U.S. attorney handling the case, Benton J. Campbell of the eastern district, declined to comment.

During the excavation phase of the Riverdale project, Riverdale residents were repeatedly told by Con Ed staff in meetings with Community Board 8, that the utility did not have enough supervisors catch oftcomplained- about errors, like metal trench covers that had not been adequately paved into place and had corners sticking out, or, in one case, an unauthorized street closure.

Messages left at Felix Associates’ Bronx offices on Monday and Tuesday were not returned.