A former senior aide to Eric Adams, the ex-mayor of New York, has been arrested on charges of accepting bribes in exchange for steering city contracts to a security company, according to a federal indictment unsealed Tuesday.
The aide, Anthony Herbert, used his position as the city’s public housing liaison to receive at least $16,000 from the executive of an unnamed company that provided security to public housing and from a funeral home director, federal prosecutors said.
Mr. Herbert, 61, who was also accused of submitting a fraudulent loan application for a fake baked goods company, faces decades in prison if convicted of the most serious charges in the six-count indictment, which include extortion under color of official right and honest services wire fraud.
He was fired in September after posting a video on social media about the killing of Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist, in which he said, “karma has come to collect.” He had also posted a meme critical of Mr. Kirk.
He appeared before Judge Stewart D. Aaron in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday, pleaded not guilty and was released on $50,000 bond. His lawyer, Richard J. Washington, said Mr. Herbert “maintains his innocence.”
The charges against Mr. Herbert represent the latest accusation of graft to hit the Adams administration, which was engulfed in corruption scandals during the former mayor’s time in office. Mr. Adams was charged with bribery and fraud in 2024, but a judge dropped the charges after the Justice Department under President Trump sought their dismissal so Mr. Adams could help carry out the president’s immigration agenda.
Mr. Herbert joined the Adams administration in February 2022. He first served as the Brooklyn director of the mayor’s community affairs unit and then became the mayor’s contact with public housing officials and residents.
From 2022 to 2023, prosecutors said, Mr. Herbert used public money to pay the director of a funeral home for the funerals of two crime victims in exchange for a $5,000 bribe.
In May 2024, federal prosecutors said, Mr. Herbert asked the executive of the security company for a “loan” of up to $15,000 and encouraged the executive to apply for city contracts to provide security to public housing. He ghostwrote the company’s application to the city, prosecutors said, which he emailed to the executive to “peruse for corrections.”
Later that month, the executive met Mr. Herbert outside his home in Brooklyn and handed him $5,000 in cash, according to the indictment.
The executive continued to send Mr. Herbert payments over the next few months, prosecutors said, both electronically and in cash stuffed in an envelope. Prosecutors said the executive met with two City Hall officials in July 2024 to discuss the application, but Mr. Herbert did not attend the meeting because “it would look like I’m soliciting government contracts,” he said, using an expletive.
Despite Mr. Herbert’s repeated efforts to pressure city officials, the company was not awarded a contract, after law enforcement officials “disrupted” the scheme, prosecutors said.
Before Mr. Herbert accepted the bribes, prosecutors said he also applied for a fraudulent loan in April 2021 as part of a program intended to keep small businesses afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr. Herbert claimed he operated a baked-goods business, the indictment says.
Attached to his loan application, prosecutors said, was an invoice for $810 for an “’80s-themed,” three-layer cake, decorated in tie-dye colors. But the invoice — along with the business itself — was fraudulent, they said.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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