The Trump administration appears likely to succeed in having federal corruption charges dropped against Mayor Eric Adams in Manhattan.
But in Brooklyn, a separate group of prosecutors has been conducting a long-running investigation involving Mr. Adams’s most prominent fund-raiser — and at one point searched her homes and office for evidence of a possible Chinese government scheme to influence Mr. Adams’s election, according to a copy of a search warrant, portions of which were read to The New York Times.
Mr. Adams has known the fund-raiser, Winnie Greco, for more than a decade, and he appointed her to be his Asian affairs adviser after he became mayor in 2022. She has been a close collaborator with people and groups linked to the Chinese government over the years, and she has showed a willingness to steer politicians toward pro-Beijing narratives, The Times reported in October.
The searches of her homes in the Bronx and office in Queens occurred early last year and were overseen by prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The agents conducting the searches were also seeking evidence of solicitation of illegal contributions from foreign nationals, wire fraud and conspiracy, the warrant said.
On the day Ms. Greco’s homes were searched, and as part of the same investigation, agents also searched the mansion of another prominent fund-raiser for the Adams campaign, Lian Wu Shao, on Long Island, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The search of Mr. Shao’s home has not been previously reported.
A wealthy Chinese businessman, Mr. Shao is the operator of the New World Mall in Flushing, Queens, which housed Ms. Greco’s office. Records show that hundreds of donors associated with his companies boosted Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign.
Neither Ms. Greco nor Mr. Shao has been accused of wrongdoing, and it is possible the investigation could conclude without any charges being brought.
A spokesman for Mr. Adams’s 2025 campaign, Todd Shapiro, said in a statement that both the mayor and his campaign “have always followed the law, and that is why neither he nor the campaign has been accused of any wrongdoing in this case.”
Ms. Greco, through her lawyer, declined to comment. Mr. Shao did not respond to several requests for comment made over several days.
The inquiry continued after Mr. Adams was indicted following an investigation by the F.B.I. and prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan. He was charged with conspiracy, fraud, bribery and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions from Turkish nationals.
Last month the Justice Department asked a judge in Manhattan to dismiss those charges, saying they were interfering with Mr. Adams’s ability to aid in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The move led several prosecutors, including the interim U.S. attorney in Manhattan, to resign in protest.
There is no indication that Mr. Adams is a target of the investigation in Brooklyn into Chinese influence or that Eastern District prosecutors believe he played any role in a criminal scheme.
Even so, given the push to drop the charges against Mr. Adams in the neighboring district, those prosecutors may be forced to navigate fraught terrain if they try to bring a case that touches in any way on the mayor or his campaign, according to interviews with three former Eastern District prosecutors.
Mr. Adams’s relationship with Ms. Greco dates at least to 2014, when, as Brooklyn borough president, he named her an honorary ambassador to Brooklyn’s Chinese community.
She accompanied Mr. Adams on at least two of his six trips he made to China while he was borough president, and records show she requested dozens of meetings with him on behalf of Chinese businessmen and government officials.
In April 2018, Ms. Greco held the first fund-raiser for Mr. Adams’s mayoral campaign, a dinner event with 500 guests at the Royal Queen restaurant in Mr. Shao’s New World Mall in Flushing, Queens, that netted $64,000 — and qualified Mr. Adams’s campaign for an additional $100,000 under the city’s generous matching-funds program.
In the years that followed, she organized at least nine additional events at the same restaurant, along with others at different venues that helped raise at least $1.6 million for Mr. Adams’s 2021 campaign, a Times analysis shows.
He brought her into his administration when he became mayor in 2022, and, while working in City Hall, she scheduled scores of meetings with people and groups with connections to Beijing, including at least a dozen dinners and events with one of the top Chinese government officials in the United States, the consul general in New York.
On Feb. 29, 2024, her homes were searched by investigators from the Eastern District, an office that has focused in part on bringing cases targeting Chinese transnational repression and influence operations.
On the same day, they also searched Mr. Shao’s mansion and his mall, where Ms. Greco kept a campaign office.
Mr. Shao was another central figure in the fund-raising efforts that helped elect Mr. Adams as mayor.
More than 100 cashiers, waiters, and other low-wage workers at his mall gave Mr. Adams $249 apiece, records show, even though many of them were not registered to vote. The donations qualified Mr. Adams’s campaign to receive more than $200,000, most of it from the city’s matching funds program.
On Aug. 8, 2021, Mr. Shao held a fund-raiser at his home in Old Brookville, N.Y., that generated 231 donations and raised $55,000 for Mr. Adams, qualifying him for an additional $364,000 in matching funds. Both Mr. Adams and Ms. Greco were present.
Four donors listed in city filings as attendees by Mr. Adams’s campaign told The Times they did not go to the event.
“I definitely did not attend,” said the lawyer Kenneth Horowitz, who was listed in Mr. Adams’s campaign filings as one of the attendees. “I’ve never attended a campaign contribution event in my life.”
Previous reporting by the nonprofit news organization The City and others has documented other irregularities with donations Mr. Shao helped raise. City auditors cited the irregularities in a report issued in August, and the Campaign Finance Board denied the mayor millions of dollars in public matching funds in December — dealing a huge blow to his re-election efforts.
In December 2021, after Mr. Adams had won the mayoral election, Mr. Shao stood next to him at a victory party at the Royal Queen restaurant.
The event raised more than $400,000 for Mr. Adams’s transition committee, multiple Chinese-language newspapers reported.
About a year later, Mr. Shao and Mr. Adams sat next to one another at another Royal Queen event — one attended by two officials from China’s New York consulate.
Indeed, like Ms. Greco, Mr. Shao appeared to be on good terms with Chinese consular officials. He was among a small group of Chinese American businessmen who greeted the incoming Chinese consul general in New York in 2018, and the Royal Queen restaurant in his mall was the setting for the same official’s farewell party last September.
The celebration took place days after a former aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul was charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government — and the aide’s extensive communications with the consul general were revealed. (Ms. Hochul had demanded that the consul be expelled, but U.S. officials said the diplomat was already leaving as part of a regular rotation.)
Workers at the New World Mall said they have not seen Mr. Shao since the searches by federal agents. Connie Zhang, who runs the Royal Queen restaurant and said Mr. Shao was her landlord, said she believed he has been in China.
“I’m not sure if he has come back,” she said.
Besides overseeing the investigations involving Mr. Shao and Ms. Greco, the Eastern District also recently indicted a businesswoman, Weihong Hu, whose connections to Mr. Adams and his allies, including Ms. Greco, also run deep.
Ms. Hu was charged last month with conspiring with two businessmen to steal millions of dollars from a taxpayer-funded program that placed incarcerated people in hotels she owned. During that period, Ms. Greco stayed at one of those hotels for eight months.
Ms. Hu was also a prolific fund-raiser for Mr. Adams. She held at least two events to raise money for his 2021 mayoral campaign. One of those occurred on June 4 of that year at Ms. Hu’s hotel in Fresh Meadows, Queens, The City reported. The day after the fund-raiser, Mr. Adams disclosed receiving 17 checks worth $2,000 each from donors with Chinese surnames, including a former tenant of Ms. Hu’s and a worker at one of her hotels.
More recently, at a fund-raiser organized by Ms. Hu in 2023 at her Hudson Yards apartment, the campaign netted $87,638, one of its biggest single-day hauls. Both Mr. Adams and Ms. Greco attended the event. Some donors who donated that day later told The City and other outlets that they were reimbursed for the donations made in their names — an apparent violation of the law.
The indictment of Ms. Hu does not mention her fund-raising activities.
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