When Mayor Eric Adams named former NYPD detective Jeffrey Garcia the city’s second nightlife mayor in late 2023, he described Garcia’s mission as resolving issues at clubs and bars amicably, without the need for court action or police raids.
But records show Garcia’s own businesses were embroiled in financial disputes that date back to before his appointment to the role. And, unusual for his government position, he hasn’t been required to file financial disclosure reports — which would have revealed his debts — with the city ethics board until this year.
A review of Garcia’s business records shows that he was hauled into court by two businesses in recent years that chased him for more than $350,000 that he did not contest owing. Both firms, for which Garcia served as a money transfer agent out of multiple locations, got judgments in their favor.
The first ruling came in January 2023, nine months before Garcia’s appointment, at a time when he was serving on Adams’ volunteer Small Business Advisory Commission. A Manhattan Supreme Court judge approved a $94,000 judgment against Garcia in favor of New Jersey-based Omnex Group.
In October 2024, a Rockland County Supreme Court judge awarded Choice Money Transfer over $265,000 — including interest — for payments owed since early 2022 by one of Garcia’s former financial service firms, Daysi Travel. The complaint in that case says Daysi Travel ceased operations in April 2022.
Garcia didn’t contest either lawsuit, according to court records, which indicate a lone payment of $5,000 to the Omnex Group since the judgments were entered.
Garcia declined comment, but a spokesperson for City Hall said the judgments followed challenges at the businesses that stemmed from the COVID pandemic and that Garcia is in the process of resolving the debts.
An attorney for Choice Money Transfer, which itself ceased operations in October, declined comment. Attorneys for Omnex Group didn’t respond to requests for comment.
A Diplomatic Role
The nightlife office was launched under former Mayor Bill de Blasio to bolster the industry, help night clubs become better neighbors and to ease the sometimes adversarial relationship they have with city agencies, particularly the NYPD.
Its director, aka the “nightlife mayor,” plays a sensitive diplomatic role in a realm with its share of abuses, which includes periodic allegations of payoffs to police officers and last year’s revelation of a federal criminal investigation of the twin brother of former police commissioner Edward Caban involving the nightlife industry. Before taking up the role, Garcia had been a statewide advocate for Latino bars and restaurants and more recently for Latino cannabis entrepreneurs.
Adams came to City Hall as a proponent of small businesses and as an unabashed partaker in the city’s nightlife offerings, and he expanded de Blasio’s approach after appointing Garcia.
In December 2023, the mayor announced that he was eliminating an NYPD-led program that conducted inspections of night spots — which involved a host of city agencies and the State Liquor Authority — when establishments didn’t sufficiently address complaints about violence and quality of life issues. The inspections were unannounced and often resulted in summonses and hefty fines, and sometimes closures.
Critics, including Adams, have blasted the inspections as intrusive raids that mostly targeted clubs in Black and brown communities, but proponents said they were used only as a last resort for the most troubled spots.
Records at the Department of Small Business Services, the agency under which Adams moved the nightlife office when he appointed Garcia to the $146,000 director post in October 2023, show the inspections, known by the acronym MARCH, happened 18 times in Adams’ first six months.
They occurred just twice over the second half of 2022 and not at all in 2023 ahead of Adams’ announcement at the end of that year that he would eliminate them.
Adams replaced the raids with something he called CURE, Coordinating a United Resolution with Establishments, under which the Office of Nightlife and Police Department attempt to resolve issues at nightclubs through dialogue rather than enforcement.
At an August 2024 Dominican heritage reception at Gracie Mansion, Adams explained in part why that type of approach was needed.
“My brother Jeff Garcia, when I campaigned, we used to go to Dominican restaurants, Dominican nightclubs, Dominican establishments, and they used to be harassed by the police department. They used to be taunted and fined,” Adams, a former police captain who has otherwise staunchly stood up for the NYPD as mayor, said that night. “We decided to put a brother that understood the entertainment community — now he’s our ‘Nightlife Mayor’ making it happen.”
Julianne Cho, a spokesperson for the Department of Small Business Services, said under the CURE program businesses are provided education, guidance on best practices and support to help them correct issues and improve their operations or security.
She said the Office of Nightlife handled over 180 CURE cases last year, referred by various agencies.
No Disclosures Yet
While Garcia holds considerable sway over the city’s nightlife industry, he was not initially named by City Hall to a list of officials required to file annual financial reports in 2024 to the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board. But that changed last month.
Cho said Garcia wasn’t previously identified as a required filer because the Office of Nightlife was in the process of being shifted out of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment at the time.
She said Garcia would file disclosures covering both 2024 and 2023, as required, before May.
Just ahead of publication, the City Hall spokesperson said Garcia had filed his financial disclosure covering 2023. THE CITY requested the form from the ethics board, but has yet to receive it.
Garcia is also the owner of a Bronx coffee and wine shop that opened nearly a decade ago, according to public records.
A firm affiliated with the shop, Mon Amour Group Inc, which is registered to Garcia, was hit with $7,000 in judgments sought by the state Workers Compensation Board in early 2022 and late 2023 for lapses in insurance coverage.
A spokesperson for the board said the judgments have yet to be paid. The City Hall spokesperson said the fines are in process of being resolved by the company.
The policing of late night clubs and bars has always been a thorny issue, but last year’s revelations were unusual in ensnaring top officials in the department.
In early September 2024, FBI officials confiscated the phones of Police Commissioner Edward Caban and his identical twin brother, former NYPD sergeant James Caban, which the New York Post reported is part of a probe of alleged influence peddling in the nightlife industry. Edward Caban resigned within days.
A week later, a bar owner in Coney Island whose establishment had been hammered by enforcement from the local precinct told NBC News that James Caban, introduced through a City Hall staffer, had requested thousands of dollars in payments to help resolve the issue.
The owner, Shamel Kelly, refused, and said he was soon forced to close his business.
A City Hall staffer who served as Adams’ liaison to the nightlife industry when Adams served as Brooklyn Borough President, Ray Martin, was terminated a day after Kelly’s story was first reported. City Hall officials would only say at the time that Martin violated the terms of his employment.
No suggestion has emerged that Garcia is connected to any of these issues.
Since Edward Caban’s resignation, the phones of at least a half dozen police officials have been confiscated by the FBI — including ranking officers in midtown Manhattan, Southeast Queens and Northern Manhattan, according to sources and published reports.
The New York Post recently reported on a federal claim filed by a lieutenant that said James Caban had, on occasion, impersonated his police commissioner brother when he showed up at the 34th Precinct in Washington Heights to meet with top officials.
The lieutenant alleged in the claim, filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that officers were instructed to disregard 311 complaints against certain establishments after those meetings.
Two attorneys representing Caban did not respond to phone messages from THE CITY.
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