“Cindy Tappe took advantage of her position as the NYU Director of Finance and Administration by diverting funds that were intended to benefit students for her own personal gain. Her fraudulent actions not only threatened to affect the quality of education for students with disabilities and multilingual students, but denied our city’s minority and women owned business enterprises a chance to fairly compete for funding,” said District Attorney Bragg. “In Manhattan, we will continue to root out fraud committed at the expense of our students and businesses. I thank the New York State Comptroller’s Office for its partnership in this investigation.” 

“As alleged, Mickey Barreto repeatedly and fraudulently claimed ownership of one of the City’s most iconic landmarks, the New Yorker Hotel,” said District Attorney Bragg. “We will not tolerate manipulation of our city’s property records by those who seek to scam the system for personal gain.”

“These indictments depict allegations of widespread fraud within the real estate industry primarily spearheaded by one man: Nir Meir,” said District Attorney Bragg. “In total, we allege these defendants’ conspiracies netted them a total of $86 million stolen from investors, contractors, and the City of New York. My Office’s Rackets Bureau is laser-focused on fraud in the construction and real estate industries and will continue to root out people who steal from investors and corrupt the market.” 

“We allege that these four individuals targeted intoxicated New Yorkers and used their credit cards and financial apps to purchase hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise at Apple and luxury retailers,” said District Attorney Bragg. “We are working with retailers to make sure their business practices do not encourage large-scale, late-night unauthorized purchases.”