Winnie Greco, in red, joined the mayor on stage at an event inside the New World Mall in September 2022.
Early on Thursday morning, the FBI raided two homes owned by Winnie Greco, an aide to Mayor Eric Adams who was the subject of an investigation by THE CITY. They also raided offices at the New World Mall in Flushing, which was also the subject of an investigation by THE CITY.
News 12 first broke the news of the raid, learning of it from a viewer who called in about a commotion in the Bronx. And from there, we were off to the races – figuring out what happened, what the third location was (we broke that it was the mall,) what the mayor’s response would be. We ended up grabbing him at a Gracie Mansion event Thursday night, but he didn’t say much. I get the feeling even his non-answer is properly vetted.
Greco is the third person with close ties to the mayor who’s been raided by federal authorities. It all started in early November with Brianna Suggs, then we learned about Rana Abbasova.
My colleague Yoav Gonen has been writing about Greco since 2014, when he reported on her nonprofit paying for then-Brooklyn Borough President Adams’s trip to China. The nonprofit was trying to build a “friendship archway” in Sunset Park, something that still hasn’t happened yet.
The mayor announced a new archway was planned for Manhattan in his state of the city speech in January, which brought back up the old Brooklyn archway – and Greco’s ties to it. At a Lunar New Year celebration last week, Adams told the packed crowd of people at the Surrogate's Court that he would finish BOTH arches; he then declined to discuss it further when I asked him outside.
It’s a good time to remind everyone that the mayor has not been implicated specifically in any crime, and there have so far been no arrests and no indictments stemming from these raids. But it continues to be an interesting time to be a reporter in New York City.
This week (feels longer) I also wrote about the major issues some nonprofits are facing in getting paid from the city as they begin to transition into a new billing system. As I reported this story, I found out the newly-appointed head of the inaugural Mayor’s Office of Nonprofit Services, Karen Ford, quietly left the job within a year of being hired. Her departure isn’t ideal, as organizations are owed millions of dollars by city agencies and don’t know when they’re getting paid. I hope to pick this back up again next week because the response I received after publishing was overwhelming. If you know anything or want to talk, reply to this to connect! [THE CITY]
⭐ Other interesting stories⭐
➸ Speaking of contracts, a recent tweak in some is leaving senior citizens in Queens without rides [THE CITY]
➸ Inside the Brooklyn sweatshop that processes tobacco for bodegas [THE CITY]
➸ Bo Dietl almost ran security at the Floyd Bennett Field migrant shelter [POLITICO]
➳ Where is Kate Middleton????
🦉 I enjoyed this essay on Flaco the owl. [DEFECTOR]
🎓 Do The Wall Street Journal next! [NIEMAN LAB]
The media layoff beat is booming [SLATE]
📺WATCH📺
The best of Richard Lewis on Letterman [YOUTUBE]
This guy uploaded every episode of “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego” (and apparently there was a later show called “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego”???) and I’ve been watching way too many episodes. See how much you know about the world as it was in the 1990s … [YOUTUBE]
Thanks for reading!