A Brooklyn businessman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud on Friday in Manhattan federal court after prosecutors said he had made illegal donations to Mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 campaign.
The businessman, Erden Arkan, is one of two people who have been charged in relation to a sprawling corruption case against Mr. Adams unveiled last year, and the first to plead guilty.
Mr. Adams was charged in late September with bribery, fraud and conspiring with Turkish officials to receive illegal foreign campaign donations and has pleaded not guilty. He has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
Mr. Arkan has close ties with New York City’s Turkish community and owns a building firm called KSK Construction. He pleaded guilty on Friday to soliciting funds from 10 of his employees and to making straw donations to Mr. Adams’s campaign.
In court, Mr. Arkan, 76, appeared as a gaunt man in tortoiseshell glasses and a rumpled gray suit.
“When I wrote the checks, I knew the Eric Adams campaign would use the checks to apply to the public matching program,” Mr. Arkan said.
Judge Dale E. Ho ordered Mr. Arkan to return to court on Aug. 15 for sentencing and to pay $18,000 in restitution. He also faces five years in federal prison, three years’ probation and a $250,000 fine.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Celia Cohen said in court that Mr. Arkan had made straw contributions that were “based on a misrepresentation.”
Mr. Arkan — identified in the indictment of Mr. Adams as “Businessman-5” — and others met with Mr. Adams in April 2021, prosecutors said. He listened as Mr. Adams explained the workings of New York City’s generous matching-funds program, which rewards candidates who receive small-dollar donations by making them eligible to collect large sums of public money for their campaigns. And a month later, prosecutors said, Mr. Arkan held a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams.
A day before the scheduled fund-raiser, a Turkish official sent Mr. Arkan at least one check, and he later sent a message saying that the “checks that reached us are 17,000.”
In his attempts to recruit others in the construction industry and the Turkish community, prosecutors said, Mr. Arkan conveyed to them that this “may feel like swimming against the current, but unfortunately this is how things work in this country.”
Mr. Arkan gave $1,250 apiece to 10 of his employees to donate to Mr. Adams’s campaign, prosecutors said.
In total, the fund-raising event put on by Mr. Arkan raised more than $69,000 from 84 donors. The campaign then used those donations to seek an additional $63,760 in matching funds, the indictment said.
The scheme, Ms. Cohen said, was “planned in consultation with the Turkish Consulate.” One employee cut a check in the name of his wife. Mr. Adams’s campaign applied for public matching funds based on eight of the donations, Ms. Cohen said.
Judge Ho ordered Mr. Arkan to pay a $100,000 bond and surrender his passport and not to travel outside New York and New Jersey.
Federal prosecutors had filed a notice of intent to charge Mr. Arkan last month for his role in the campaign fund-raising scheme. They did not indicate in court on Friday or in earlier filings whether Mr. Arkan would cooperate in the government’s case against Mr. Adams. It remained unclear whether foreign money was used in any of the actions Mr. Arkan is accused of taking, which could limit his ability to assist prosecutors, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and Mr. Arkan’s lawyer, Jonathan Rosen, declined to comment on whether Mr. Arkan would assist prosecutors with their case. Mr. Arkan signed the plea agreement on Dec. 19.
A lawyer for Mr. Adams did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.
In September, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York secured a five-count indictment against Mr. Adams, making him the first sitting mayor in the modern history of New York City to face criminal charges.
Prosecutors have indicated that they have a strong case against the mayor that includes “multiple witnesses who will expressly implicate the defendant in criminal conduct.” They added that the witness accounts were backed up by “electronic communications and other data obtained from over 50 cellphones and other electronic devices and accounts.”
Recently, prosecutors presented additional evidence to a grand jury in Mr. Adams’s case, suggesting that they are taking steps to seek more charges — against him, other people or both. The possibility of additional charges looms as the mayor is gearing up for trial in April and for a June Democratic primary in pursuit of a second mayoral term.
Mr. Adams described the investigation as “just a besmirching of my character” in an interview with Fox 5 on Friday morning before Mr. Arkan’s appearance in court.
“My job is to do what the people elected me to do, which we have continued to do,” Mr. Adams said. “We’re not listening to the noise.”
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