Brooklyn Assemblywoman Charged In Fraud Schemes

CONEY ISLAND, NY — A Brooklyn state assemblywoman allegedly bilked the city and federal governments out of more than $59,000 by running four fraud schemes over more than three years, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Assemblywoman Pamela Harris, a Democrat from Coney Island, was indicted in Brooklyn federal court on 11 counts of crimes including wire fraud, witness tampering and making false statements for allegedly defrauding the City Council, the city's Superstorm Sandy recovery program and federal agencies on several occasions — including when she was a sitting lawmaker.

She then tried to block a probe into her alleged crimes by getting witnesses to lie to federal investigators last spring, prosecutors said.

"At a time when many residents in her district were dealing with the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Harris was busy brewing a storm of her own, one that resulted in her receiving significant payouts by the very federal agency charged with helping those truly in need," William Sweeney, the FBI's assistant director in charge in New York, said in a statement.

Harris, a Coney Island native, won a 2015 special election to represent the 46th Assembly District encompassing Coney Island, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and other nearby South Brooklyn neighborhoods. She took office in 2016.

According to prosecutors, Harris lied to the City Council twice to get more than $34,000 in grants for a nonprofit she ran that she then diverted into her personal bank account. The second scheme occurred after she was elected to the Assembly.

From August 2014 to July 2015, Harris won a $23,000 discretionary grant from the Council, saying she'd use the money to rent a studio space, prosecutors said. Once the city disbursed the money, Harris allegedly moved it to her own checking account.

She essentially repeated the scheme over the next 18 months, taking $11,400 in grant money meant to help her nonprofit rent space and putting it in her personal acocunt, prosecutors said.

Earlier, between 2012 and 2014, Harris lied to the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, telling authorities that storm damage forced her out of her Coney Island home and into temporary housing on Staten Island, prosecutors said.

Harris allegedly submitted fake lease agreements to FEMA for that Staten Island home while she continued to live in Coney Island and eventually pocketed $25,000 in FEMA money.

In 2016 — while serving her first full year in the Assembly — she submitted the same fake documents and told other lies to the city's Build It Back program, which eventually paid for "substantial construction" on her house, prosecutors said.

Harris also falsely told a bankruptcy trustee during bankruptcy proceedings in 2013 that she was getting $1,250 a month in assistance from a landlord, despite telling FEMA that she was paying the same landlord $1,550 a month in rent, which was also untrue, prosecutors said.

Harris' defense attorney is Joel Cohen, the high-profile attorney who represented disgraced Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in his 2015 corruption trial.

A staffer at Cohen's law office said he would release a statement after Harris is formally indicted in court on Tuesday afternoon.

Harris is the latest state lawmaker to face criminal corruption charges. New York leads the nation in corruption cases involving state officials, according to a review by PolitiFact — the state saw 30 such cases from 2005 to 2015.

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Island), a former federal prosecutor, said Harris' indictment is just more evidence of the need for ethics reform in Albany. Kaminsky replaced former Sen. Dean Skelos, who was convicted on corruption charges in 2015.

"In particular, the legislature needs to immediately focus on the outside income of legislators, as demonstrated by this latest case," Kaminsky said in a statement. "We can’t let Albany shrug this one off — we must prioritize those reforms and others to restore voters' trust and confidence in the government."

(Lead image: Pamela Harris is seen in a January 2016 video after taking office in the state Assembly. Image from nyassembly.gov)