Prosecutors have accused a top aide to former Mayor\u00a0Eric Adams\u00a0of accepting diamond earrings from two real estate developers, then pressuring city regulators to expedite their construction projects, despite safety concerns.<\/p>\n
In court papers filed Tuesday, prosecutors in Manhattan offered new details about\u00a0one of several bribery schemes<\/a>\u00a0they say was carried out by Ingrid Lewis-Martin, a close confidant of Adams who once served as the second-most powerful person in city government.<\/p>\n What You Need To Know<\/p>\n Prosecutors have accused a top aide to former Mayor\u00a0Eric Adams, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, of accepting diamond earrings from two real estate developers, then pressuring city regulators to expedite their construction projects, despite safety concerns She resigned in late 2024 shortly before\u00a0she and her son<\/a>\u00a0were charged with raking in over $100,000 in bribes from the two developers, Raizada Vaid and Mayank Dwivedi. All four have pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n Lewis-Martin was then hit with a\u00a0separate set of bribery charges<\/a>\u00a0in August, alleging she traded political favors \u2014 including nixing a planned bike lane and steering shelter contracts toward a favored developer \u2014 for cash, home renovations and even a speaking role on the TV show \u201cGodfather of Harlem.\u201d She has also pleaded not guilty to those allegations.<\/p>\n An attorney for Lewis-Martin has maintained that she was only helping her constituents cut through red tape.<\/p>\n The latest filing expands on the initial charges brought against Lewis-Martin and her son, Glenn D. Martin II, who performs under the stage name DJ Suave Luciano.<\/p>\n Shortly after meeting with Vaid and Dwivedi in 2022, Lewis-Martin received a set of 2-carat diamond earrings worth around $3,000 from the developers, according to the new court filing.<\/p>\n Lewis-Martin then pressured city regulators to speed up approvals for the developers\u2019 projects, prosecutors allege. In one case, she urged the acting commissioner of the Department of Buildings to approve the proposed renovation of a Manhattan hotel owned by Vaid, despite \u201clegitimate safety concerns\u201d raised by building inspectors, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n After city regulators agreed to expedite the application, Lewis-Martin texted her son indicating that Vaid would have him \u201ccompletely covered. You(r) fashion line is 100 percent,\u201d according to the court filing. Vaid also promised to help Martin II open a Chick-fil-A franchise, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n In an email, an attorney for Lewis-Martin, Arthur Aidala, criticized the length of the filing, without addressing its substance.<\/p>\n \u201cWe look forward to submitting our robust reply to the prosecutor\u2019s desperate 170 page answer to our motion to dismiss,\u201d Aidala said. \u201cIt is the longest answer to a motion we have ever seen and that speaks volumes about their insecurity in their case.\u201d<\/p>\n Inquiries to attorneys for Martin II, Vaid and Dwivedi were not returned.<\/p>\n The case against Lewis-Martin, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, first emerged amid a period of\u00a0overlapping scandals<\/a>\u00a0for the Adams\u2019 administration. It is unrelated to Adams\u2019 own indictment on federal corruption charges, which was\u00a0dismissed<\/a>\u00a0last year by the Justice Department. Adams is not accused of any wrongdoing in Lewis-Martin’s case.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Adams did not respond to an inquiry about the latest allegations against Lewis-Martin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prosecutors have accused a top aide to former Mayor\u00a0Eric Adams\u00a0of accepting diamond earrings from two real estate developers,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[109,25,118,75,84,83,9,24,12,108,63,87,380,27],"class_list":["post-115378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-associated-press","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics-blog","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
Lewis-Martin\u00a0resigned in late 2024 shortly before\u00a0she and her son\u00a0were charged with raking in over $100,000 in bribes from the two developers, Raizada Vaid and Mayank Dwivedi. All four have pleaded not guilty
\n
She was then hit with a\u00a0separate set of bribery charges\u00a0in August, alleging she traded political favors for cash, home renovations and even a speaking role on the TV show \u201cGodfather of Harlem.\u201d She has also pleaded not guilty to those allegations<\/p>\n