Yet another top aide to former Mayor Eric Adams has been indicted on corruption charges, this one accused by federal prosecutors of demanding kickbacks from vendors for his promises to arrange lucrative municipal contracts.
Anthony Herbert, a longtime associate of Adams, was appointed by the then-mayor as his liaison between City Hall and residents and leaders of the city’s public housing authority, NYCHA. Prosecutors say he used that position to shake down a firm looking to obtain a multi-million-dollar contract providing security at NYCHA developments. He was also accused of taking kickbacks from a funeral home director looking to participate in a city-run program subsidizing funeral services for low-income New Yorkers.
The 25-page indictment — filed by the same federal prosecutor’s office that secured a bribery and campaign finance fraud case against Adams — documented Herbert’s interaction with three unidentified senior Adams officials as he pressed to get the security firm paying him kickbacks a hefty contract. Adams’ indictment was later dismissed after the Trump Justice Department intervened to secure his cooperation in the administration’s immigration crackdown.
In one instance, Herbert allegedly ghostwrote a letter to a top Adams aide seeking to get the security firm pre-qualified as a minority-owned business, a designation that would likely help the firm win city contracts.
The indictment does not identify the official, but at the time the Adams’ official in charge of pre-qualifications was Michael Garner, the mayor’s chief diversity business officer whom Mayor Zohran Mamdani recently kept on at City Hall.
Mamdani said last week he was looking into THE CITY’s report that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) inspector general determined that a unit under Garner’s direct supervision cherry-picked data in a way that inflated the success of a Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) program he ran for years at the authority. On Tuesday, the mayor’s press office did not immediately respond to THE CITY’s questions about Garner’s interactions with Herbert.
The owner of the security firm cooperated with law enforcement from the start, secretly recording conversations with Herbert and collecting his text messages and emails in which Herbert appeared to openly discuss obtaining payments from the owner “to stay afloat.” At several points, Herbert texted Adams directly, according to the court filing, encouraging him to fund more security for NYCHA residents by claiming “the seniors are fucking complaining” about a lack of security. Prosecutors noted in his communications with Adams, Herbert did not disclose his alleged arrangement with the security firm owner.
The document even describes an incident on July 3, 2024, in which it appears Herbert took an envelope containing $3,500 in cash as he and the security firm owner approached City Hall for a meeting with two senior Adams aides. Herbert did not attend, but advised the vendor — who was recording their every word — “You don’t have to say nothing about helping out the mayor. Don’t say nothing like that.”
When the vendor emerged from the brief meeting, the indictment asserts, he thanked Herbert for setting it up. Herbert replied, “This is what we do, bro. I mean it’s like, ain’t nobody gonna do it for us.” In the end, the vendor did not get the contract he sought.
Mayoral aide Tony Herbert, left, joins Eric Adams at the opening of a Brownsville, Brooklyn recreation center, July 10, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Although Herbert was assigned to focus on the mayor’s interactions with NYCHA, Herbert appears to have branched out to get a piece of a burial assistance program providing reimbursements to low-income families via the city Human Resources Administration (HRA).
In late 2022, prosecutors say, Herbert appears to have created an arrangement where he provided the contact information of families of crime victims to the funeral home director, then expected a kickback after arranging HRA reimbursement for the burial services of the victims.
“Herbert purported to carry out this work at least in part as part of his City Hall duties and responsibilities,” the indictment alleged. Prosecutors noted that the memo of a $6,000 check Herbert received from the funeral home referenced “referrals.”
At one point an unnamed City Hall official raised questions about whether the funeral home was overcharging, noting that he’d heard that one family had received $6,000 through an online GoFundMe campaign. Herbert assured him that was not the case, even though he knew the family had, in fact, received the GoFundMe payment, the indictment alleges.
And prosecutors allege that during the COVID pandemic in April 2021, before he was brought into City Hall by Adams, Herbert fraudulently obtained a $20,000 Paycheck Protection Plan loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration for a bakery for which he was the sole employee. Prosecutors say he attached a fictitious IRS tax filing documenting revenue and expenses for this company to obtain the loan.
Prosecutors say Herbert’s schemes were disrupted on Sept. 4, 2024. On that day the FBI and city Department of Investigation (DOI) agents visited the homes and seized the phones of multiple Adams administration senior aides including the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright, her husband, Schools Chancellor David Banks and his brother, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Philip Banks III.
Investigations with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg triggered the indictment of Adams’ chief advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, Department of Buildings Commissioner Eric Ulrich and Jesse Hamilton, an Adams protégé the mayor put in charge of city leases. An Adams aide, Mohamed Bahi, pleaded guilty to a federal charge related to campaign fundraising.
On Tuesday, Herbert was arraigned in federal court and released without bail. His attorney, Richard Washington, declined to comment other than to say that Herbert “vehemently denies wrongdoing.”
A spokesman for Adams, Todd Shapiro, said the former mayor would have no comment on the charges filed against his former aide.
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