From the moment she started working as chief adviser to Mayor Eric Adams, Ingrid Lewis-Martin wielded immense authority over City Hall, empowered by her 40-year friendship with the mayor and a reputation as his fiercest enforcer.
And she wasted little time in using that power to enrich herself and her son, prosecutors said, while acting on behalf of her associates in New York City.
Beginning with charges handed up late last year, and then in four indictments unsealed on Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office painted a damning picture of a city for sale.
In exchange for cash, crab cakes, home renovations and even an appearance on a popular television show, Ms. Lewis-Martin fast-tracked approvals from city agencies, steered contracts to a favored developer and tried to kill a project to build protected bike lanes in Brooklyn, prosecutors said.
In one instance, they said, she cleared red tape for the owner of a Queens karaoke bar who then wired $50,000 to the business account of her son. But in others, the benefits Ms. Lewis-Martin was accused of receiving verged on the petty, like free food worth approximately $500 for an event at Gracie Mansion.
Ms. Lewis-Martin “consistently overrode the expertise of public servants so she could line her own pockets,” the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said in a statement on Thursday. “Every other New Yorker lost out.”
Mr. Adams was not charged in any of the indictments related to Ms. Lewis-Martin, and Mr. Bragg has said that the mayor is not a target of those investigations. Ms. Lewis-Martin resigned just before the earlier charges were filed against her in December.
But taken together, the five indictments related to her conduct offer a troubling view of the mayor’s stewardship of the city, just months before Mr. Adams faces voters in his bid for a second term.
They also add strain to a City Hall already racked by other corruption investigations, including one that led to an indictment of the mayor on bribery and fraud charges, which the Justice Department abandoned soon after President Trump took office.
One after another, the scandals led to chaos and, over months, the resignations of nearly a dozen top city officials — with some leaving while under investigation and others departing because they were troubled by the city’s dysfunction.
Charged alongside Ms. Lewis-Martin on Thursday were her son, Glenn D. Martin II; Jesse Hamilton, a former state senator whom Mr. Adams installed in a powerful city job; and two influential supporters of the mayor, Gina and Tony Argento, siblings who run a prominent soundstage company. Mr. Hamilton resigned from his position with the city on Thursday, according to a City Hall spokeswoman.
Two businessmen were also indicted in the alleged schemes: Tian Ji Li, a major political player in New York City’s Chinese American community, and Yechiel Landau, a real estate developer.
Mr. Bragg announced the indictments on Thursday morning in a news release with Jocelyn E. Strauber, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Investigation, which also worked on the inquiry that led to the charges.
In State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Thursday, Ms. Lewis-Martin and the other defendants entered the courtroom handcuffed and wearing professional attire. Ms. Lewis-Martin was dressed in a light gold suit.
Justice Daniel P. Conviser allowed them to have their handcuffs removed, saying “no one is being taken into custody today after this.”
All of them pleaded not guilty.
Across the five indictments, prosecutors said Ms. Lewis-Martin and her son accepted a total of more than $175,000 in bribes.
Ms. Lewis-Martin’s lawyer, Arthur L. Aidala, said in a statement that his client was facing “charges classified at the lowest level of felony in our justice system.” Her offense, he said, was “fulfilling her duty — helping fellow citizens navigate the city’s outdated and often overwhelming bureaucracy.”
“This is not justice — it is a distortion of the truth and a troubling example of politically motivated ‘lawfare,’” Mr. Aidala said.
A lawyer for Mr. Landau, Susan R. Necheles, also issued a statement, saying that her client was innocent and will be vindicated. She said Mr. Landau had “just tried to help his community” and “now has wrongly been dragged into this circus.”
Mr. Martin’s lawyer, Michael V. Cibella, said in a statement that his client had committed no crime and that he would mount a vigorous defense. The prosecutors, he said, had “spun a series of innocent facts and relationships into a fantastical scheme” to “try to take down not just a public servant but her son as well.”
Mr. Hamilton’s lawyer, Mark Pollard, said in a statement that his client denied wrongdoing and cited Mr. Hamilton’s career as a state senator and district leader.
“These allegations do not reflect who he is, what he stands for or the record of service he has built over decades,” he said. “We are confident that when the facts are brought to light, it will be clear that he has committed no wrongdoing.”
Lawyers for the Argentos and their company did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday, but they issued a statement late Wednesday in response to reports that the charges were coming.
The lawyers, George Stamboulidis and Artie McConnell, said that their clients had engaged in no wrongdoing and had cooperated with investigators, providing thousands of company documents and financial records.
In a separate statement, the company said: “We remain confident that the facts, when presented in a fair and open forum at trial, will demonstrate our complete innocence. In the meantime, we will continue to focus on our mission of serving our clients, supporting our work force and being a valued member of our industry and our community.”
Mayor Adams noted in a statement on Thursday that he had not been accused of wrongdoing in the indictments and defended Ms. Lewis-Martin, whom he called a longtime friend and colleague.
“I know her as a devoted public servant; she has declared her innocence, and my prayers are with her and her family,” the statement said, adding: “I also recognize that Jesse Hamilton has pleaded not guilty, and like anyone accused, he is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”
Both Ms. Lewis-Martin and her son were previously charged with bribery in the indictment handed up in December.
The indictments unsealed Thursday describe a range of city agencies and projects influenced by criminal conduct, while seeking to make clear that the commissioners and other officials who the indictments say were pressured by Ms. Lewis-Martin were not targets of any continuing inquiries.
The charges also show that prosecutors had tapped Ms. Lewis-Martin’s phone for most of 2024, with the intercepted calls providing some of the most damning evidence cited in the charges.
One recording captured a conference call about a project with City Hall officials and one of her co-defendants in which she told the officials to move the project forward “unless the mayor tells us otherwise.”
The accusations against her span years, from shortly after Mr. Adams took office in 2022 to November 2024, the month before she abruptly resigned.
In the indictments unsealed on Thursday, Ms. Lewis-Martin was charged with four counts of conspiracy in the fourth degree and four counts of bribe-receiving in the second degree. Her son is charged with two counts of conspiracy in the fourth degree and two counts of bribe-receiving in the second degree.
Mr. Hamilton was charged with one count of conspiracy in the fourth degree. The other defendants were each charged with one count of conspiracy in the fourth degree and one count of bribery in the second degree.
All of the charges unsealed on Thursday portrayed Ms. Lewis-Martin as the connective tissue among the defendants.
“If you were willing to pay, Ms. Lewis-Martin was open for business,” an assistant district attorney, Guy Tardanico, said at the hearing on Thursday.
The two siblings who were charged, the Argentos, own Broadway Stages, a company that controls more than four million square feet of movie and television production space on Staten Island and in Queens and Brooklyn. Their properties have served as the backdrops for prominent productions, including “The Gilded Age,” “Blue Bloods,” “Billions” and “Russian Doll.”
The case against the Argentos focuses on a stretch of McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that runs near the family’s holdings and has been the site of several traffic deaths. A movement to make the street safer took off after one particularly well-publicized death in 2021, when the driver of a Rolls-Royce killed Matthew Jensen, a popular public-school teacher, as he was crossing the street.
By 2023, the advocacy appeared to have paid off, with the Adams administration deeming the roadway “dangerous” and announcing plans to reduce the number of vehicle lanes there from four to two, and to build protected bike lanes and pedestrian islands.
But soon, the Argentos began to push back, helping to mount an expansive campaign called Keep McGuinness Moving to stop the city’s plan, which the group said would “create traffic,” “endanger public safety by delaying emergency vehicles, and destroy the local economy, businesses and employees.”
As far back as 2022, Ms. Lewis-Martin was working on the Argentos’ behalf, according to the indictment against them. In June 2022, she received a text that said “our friend Gina Argento needs our support has to do with bike lanes.” (The sender of the text was not identified in the indictment.)
“I have been working on it,” Ms. Lewis-Martin texted back, according to prosecutors. “I have a plan.”
Months later, Ms. Lewis-Martin appeared as an actor, with a speaking part, on the Hulu show “Godfather of Harlem,” which is filmed at Broadway Stages. That same day, in September 2022, she texted the siblings: “Thank you. It was everything.”
In June 2023, Ms. Lewis-Martin sent a text to schedule a meeting with the mayor to talk about McGuiness Boulevard, prosecutors said. Over the following months, Ms. Lewis-Martin communicated with the siblings about appearing on other shows, while simultaneously talking to city officials about the bike lane, the indictment said. At one point, according to the indictment, she asked that Ms. Argento have clothing from Bloomingdale’s delivered to a residence.
In a phone call in April 2024, Ms. Lewis-Martin told a City Hall employee, “Just make sure we shut their asses down on McGuinness,” the indictment said.
Publicly, Ms. Lewis-Martin positioned herself as a vocal opponent of the proposal. Two months after announcing the road safety plan, the administration abruptly changed course.
But then, days after federal and state authorities seized Ms. Lewis-Martin’s phones and searched her Brooklyn home, the city changed course again, reverting to a design that more closely resembled the original plan.
In the case last year against Ms. Lewis-Martin and her son, the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused her of using her position to intervene with city regulators on behalf of two businessmen, who were also charged. In return, Ms. Lewis-Martin and her son took $100,000 in bribes from the businessmen, money her son used to buy a 2023 Porsche Panamera, prosecutors said.
The case against Mr. Hamilton, who worked as the deputy commissioner for real estate services at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, accuses him of working with Ms. Lewis-Martin to benefit Mr. Landau, the real estate developer. In several instances, Ms. Lewis-Martin pressured Mr. Hamilton to personally intervene and assist Mr. Landau’s projects, prosecutors said.
Mr. Li, who serves as the president of the Alliance of Asian American Friends, a coalition of provincial and business associations, has been referred to in the Chinese-language press as the “head of the Adams campaign office in Flushing.”
Mr. Li was accused of bribing Ms. Lewis-Martin’s son for his mother’s help in securing city lease agreements for housing asylum seekers and expediting approvals from the Fire Department that benefited Mr. Li’s karaoke club, V Show, in Queens.
Bianca Pallaro and Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
William K. Rashbaum is a Times reporter covering municipal and political corruption, the courts and broader law enforcement topics in New York.
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