Enough already

Rico says a public whipping on one or more of the public television channels in New York would go a long way toward stopping this sort of thing...

William Rashbaum has the story in The New York Times:

A safety inspector licensed to make critical assessments of asbestos and lead risks in buildings and at construction sites across the city made a stunning admission in federal court: Despite filing hundreds of reports saying his tests had found no danger, he had not performed a single one of the tests.
The inspector, Saverio F. Todaro, 68, submitted clean asbestos or lead test results for well over two hundred buildings and apartments, including some that were demolished or renovated to make way for publicly financed projects under the Bloomberg administration’s affordable-housing program, according to people briefed on the matter and court papers.
The number of potential victims of Mr. Todaro’s fraud, which spanned at least a decade, loomed so large that the Manhattan United States attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, created a separate web page to comply with a law requiring it to notify victims.
His admissions late last month have raised troubling questions about whether such conduct might be more widespread, and it has led to an expanding inquiry focused on some aspects of the work of asbestos and lead inspectors in the city. “Todaro’s guilty plea is not the end of the story,” said the Manhattan United States attorney, Preet Bharara. “This investigation is very much ongoing.”
The investigation, in part, seeks to determine whether he conspired with others— taking bribes to fashion crude forgeries and mask his failure to conduct any tests— or whether he acted alone for other reasons, officials said.
The breadth of his crimes, the simplicity of the schemes and the apparent ease with which he got away with them over the years also suggest that the city’s oversight is strained, at best. “It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said one official briefed on the matter and on the issues facing city and federal regulators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing. “We just don’t know how big the iceberg is.”
Because Mr. Todaro never did the tests in question, and because in more than a dozen instances the buildings involved have been torn down and replaced with new ones, or gutted and renovated, it is impossible in some cases to determine if proper tests would have revealed potentially dangerous levels of lead or asbestos.
At the same time, federal and city officials have not made public the precise number and location of the buildings involved, or disclosed specifics of what they think took place in each instance. While the city’s health department has reviewed seventeen cases in which Mr. Todaro performed lead tests, it remains unclear whether city officials plan to conduct any other reviews or retesting.
But the stakes are unquestionably high. The Environmental Protection Agency has found that the long-term effects of lead exposure in children and adults can be severe. Inhaling asbestos can cause lung disease and cancer.
Several city agencies sought to play down the dangers: City regulators have found no evidence that either the fraud or risks are widespread, said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “We can always look for new ways to improve our process,” he said. “DEP is going to start increasing audits, which is the right step to ensure inspections are being completed properly.”
But, in addition to the continuing investigation that grew out of the charges against Mr. Todaro, there are now six other unrelated federal cases under way exploring allegations of similar practices in the New York City area. Some 1,500 people hold city or federal certifications to test for lead or asbestos in the area. One line of inquiry for investigators in the case involving Mr. Todaro is whether any building owners, management firms, or contractors for whom he or other inspectors worked paid bribes for the bogus inspection reports. Officials say substantial sums of money could have been saved by allowing the demolition of buildings without performing expensive asbestos abatement.
Indeed, several current and former law enforcement officials and industry experts underscored that the city’s construction industry, and in particular the demolition and asbestos abatement sectors, have a rich history of corruption. “It sounds like a disaster,” said Daniel J. Castleman, the former chief assistant in the office of the previous Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, where he supervised corruption cases focusing on the demolition and asbestos abatement industries. “Obviously there are always going to be people who will take a short cut in order to make money, whether it’s in the inspection of lead or asbestos or concrete or steel.” The case bears some similarities to one brought by the district attorney last year, which exposed widespread fraud in the concrete testing industry and led to criminal convictions and cost the city and private developers millions of dollars for retesting.
The precise targets of the growing investigation are unclear, and several people briefed on the matter said it may be some time before determinations are made as to whether others will be charged. “As you pull one thread, the sweater unravels, and right now we are in that mode,” William V. Lometti, who heads the New York office of the EPA’s Criminal Investigation Division, said of the case.
The inquiry is being handled by agents under Mr. Lometti’s supervision and the City Department of Investigation, with assistance from the federal Department of Labor’s Office of the Inspector General; it is being prosecuted by Anne C. Ryan, a veteran assistant United States attorney with a background in environmental crimes, who works in the Complex Frauds Unit in Mr. Bharara’s office.
Mr. Todaro, who is free on bail, pleaded guilty to mail fraud, making false statements and violating the Toxic Substances Control Act. Under his plea agreement, he could face a sentence of between 51 and 63 months. Mr. Todaro’s lawyer, Steven M. Statsinger, declined to comment.
His client first came under scrutiny in 2008. That year, an employee at the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene noticed two lab reports detailing the results of lead dust swipe tests Mr. Todaro claimed to have performed in a Queens apartment in 2006 and 2007 looked almost identical, officials said. The tests were done after the agency ordered remediation there because a young Queens boy showed high levels of lead in his blood two years in a row.
The case was referred to the City Department of Investigation and, when officials there subpoenaed and began reviewing Mr. Todaro’s business records, it quickly became clear that many had been doctored or altered.
While the inquiry would not have begun without their work and the actions of the Health Department employee, the case nonetheless raises questions about the city’s oversight of lead and asbestos testing. In addition to the Health Department, which orders and over sees testing when children suffer lead poisoning, those responsibilities are divided among a somewhat fractured mosaic of city agencies.
They are: the Department of Environmental Protection, which certifies asbestos investigators; the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which enforces the city’s housing maintenance code and oversees its affordable housing programs; and the Department of Buildings, to which documentation regarding some asbestos work is filed.
There are gaps in communication among the agencies. The city’s Department of Environmental Protection suspended Mr. Todaro’s license in 2004 for improper building surveys and poor recordkeeping, it failed to notify the other city agencies for which he did asbestos-related work, as well as state and federal regulators, lapses that allowed him to evade additional scrutiny. A spokesman said that the agency would make such notifications in the future.
The Department of Environmental Protection focuses its force of fifteen inspectors on the roughly 5,000 projects where asbestos abatement is being done every year. But on average, it audits only a tiny fraction of the roughly 28,400 projects that inspectors like Mr. Todaro certify each year as safe. Next year the agency said it expects to perform many more such reviews and computerize the recordkeeping system for such reviews. The agency— which says that there are roughly 550 asbestos investigators certified to work in any given year— has suspended nine inspectors and revoked the licenses of seven in the last ten years, a spokesman said. And only one of the four agencies— the Health Department— can use its computer system to zero in on individual inspectors, and determine the location of the buildings where they performed tests, officials said. The others are dependent on whatever records the inspectors themselves maintain.

"A rich history of corruption?" Rico says that sounds like they're almost proud of it...