This story was published in partnership with The Guardian.
City Comptroller Brad Lander is urging the administration of Mayor Adams to nix a contract extension that would steer nearly $20 million to a hotel owner who was indicted last month in an alleged corruption scheme involving one of her government-funded Queens properties.
The hotel owner, Weihong Hu, has held fundraisers for Adams’ 2021 election and current reelection campaigns, including two at that hotel, the former Wyndham Garden in Fresh Meadows.
In a letter sent Monday to the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and obtained by THE CITY and The Guardian US, Lander’s office cited “potential vendor corruption and fraud” and other issues as it called for the rejection of a pending three-year deal to continue housing formerly incarcerated individuals at the hotel.
Last month, the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney brought an indictment against Hu and the CEO of the nonprofit Exodus Transitional Community, alleging that she bribed the executive, Julio Medina, to house inmates served by the nonprofit at two of her hotels.
Prosecutors alleged that Hu and a co-conspirator, the owner of an unlicensed firm handling security at the hotels, paid Medina $2.5 million in kickbacks in exchange for $51 million in subcontracts on Exodus’ contract with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.
“Ripping off funds meant to provide housing to people transitioning off Rikers is obscene,” said Lander. “My office joins local elected officials, who rang the alarm on this, in calling on the mayor’s office to immediately halt its plans to renew this contract because doling out $20 million to an individual indicted for fraud against the city is an abuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Assemblymember Nily Rozic, City Councilmember Linda Lee and other elected officials have been calling on the Adams administration to end the city-funded program at the Fresh Meadows hotel for years, in response to reporting on Exodus’ operations by THE CITY that started with an expose on its use of unlicensed security firms.
Lander is in the field of candidates challenging Adams in the Democratic primary for mayor in June.
Comptroller Brad Lander speaks outside the Municipal Building about a pair of lawsuits aimed at forcing the state to implement congestion pricing, July 25, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Hu has pleaded not guilty, and court records indicate she was preparing to enter possible plea discussions with prosecutors. (Her attorney denies that she’s negotiating.) Medina and the alleged co-conspirator, Christopher Dantzler, have also pleaded not guilty.
Hu’s Fresh Meadows hotel has been housing formerly incarcerated people since 2021, when then-Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a program to sharply reduce the population of the city’s jails over concerns about the spread of the COVID virus.
Hu held two fundraisers at the hotel to support Adams in 2021 and another one at her Hudson Yards apartment building in 2023, raising over $44,000 for Adams’ re-election bid.
Multiple donors to the third fundraiser previously told THE CITY, Documented and The Guardian US that they were reimbursed for their $2,000 contributions by members of Hu’s family, which would make those donations illegal under campaign finance rules.
THE CITY and Documented also exposed that Winnie Greco, Adams’ chief Asian community fundraiser and liaison to Asian communities, stayed in a room at the city-funded Fresh Meadows hotel for seven months during Exodus’ contract there and has never provided evidence she paid for it. Adams’ son, Jordan Coleman, also stayed at the hotel.
Hu has two hotel projects under development in midtown Manhattan, both of which benefited from actions by the Adams administration in 2022 that removed stop work orders at the sites. This came after she hired John Sampson, a former state Senator who is close to Adams, to serve as president of her hotel management company and tapped the Rev. Al Cockfield II, another Adams ally, to help deal with city agencies regarding the stop work orders, THE CITY, Documented and The Guardian US previously reported.
The former Wyndham Garden hotel in Fresh Meadows, Queens, Nov. 19, 2024. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
Despite last month’s indictment, a contract between the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice and the vendor that replaced Exodus, Housing Works, is heading toward renewal for three years starting July 1 — which would keep public dollars flowing to Hu through her Fresh Meadows hotel unless a new site is selected.
A second hotel owned by Hu in Long Island City, where Exodus previously served similar clients, has since been vacated, according to the comptroller’s letter.
A spokesperson for MOCJ said city officials have been working with Housing Works to find an alternative site for the residence, but that it’s challenging to identify new sites and ultimately Housing Works is responsible for choosing where to serve its clients.
“Terminating our work at this property without a suitable alternative would risk community safety, retraumatize individuals, and ultimately cost taxpayers more,” said the spokesperson, Noah Pransky. “While we are working diligently to find a new site, siting these kinds of shelters can be difficult for a number of reasons, including a tight real estate market and Fair Share criteria.”
Fair Share is a requirement in the city charter that municipal facilities and services be distributed as evenly as possible throughout the city.
Ben Weinberg, director of public policy for Citizens Union, a good-government group, said the Mayor’s Office should find alternative hotel providers “as soon as possible.”
“It’s baffling that taxpayer dollars continue to fund a subcontractor after their indictment for bribery and theft of public funds,” he said. “The possibility that this subcontractor could implicate City Hall officials as part of a plea deal raises even more ethical concerns.”
Housing Works, which offers re-entry support services for incarcerated individuals, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. A spokesperson for the nonprofit didn’t respond to a request seeking comment.
Unexplained Funding Hikes
The eight-page later, written by deputy comptroller for contracts and procurement Charlette Hamamgian, details questionable action by the city in its dealings with Hu’s Queens hotels, and particularly the one in Fresh Meadows, which were cemented in subcontracts that Hu’s companies signed with Exodus and Housing Works.
It notes that Hu’s subcontract with Housing Works runs through June 30, 2028, even as Housing Works’ own contract with the city is set to expire this June.
That subcontract, which started Jan. 1, 2024, also hiked the monthly fee paid by the city to the Fresh Meadows hotel by over $20,000 — putting the monthly payout at just over $542,000.
If finalized, the three-year contract extension would yield Hu’s hotel $19.5 million in taxpayer dollars.
MOCJ officials told THE CITY they are looking into what prompted the monthly rate hike. They said Housing Works reached the longer-term subcontract with Hu’s hotel, which they said was not an unusual arrangement and left wiggle room for changes.
The comptroller’s office also questioned two recent increases in the Housing Works contract with the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, one for $6 million in February 2024 and another for $3 million registered earlier this year.
The letter says the main driver of the first increase was “tied to rent increases to housing sites.” A portion also went to the food service firm Meiqiao, whose president, Lan Mei, is the daughter-in-law of Hu, according to the letter. The company is registered to the same address as the Fresh Meadows hotel.
City contract records say Meiqiao had two taxpayer-funded contracts, totaling $5.5 million, for daily food service in hotels that double as shelters.
The letter says Lan Mei provided conflicting information to the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services, identifying herself at one point as the sole principal owner of Meiqiao and at another as a minor stakeholder.
Hu’s indictment suggests that Hu herself was in the mix. Federal prosecutors allege that she served as a member of a catering company, which isn’t named but appears to be Meiqiao, that provided food for her two Queens hotels at a cost of $17 million over three years.
The indictment alleges the catering company previously operated as a construction firm until Hu and others repurposed it in September 2020.
MOCJ officials said they plan to investigate the relationship between Meiqiao and Hu given the information highlighted by Lander’s office. They said they’re looking into what the $6 million increase comprised, which they say covered three hotels, but attributed the $3 million bump to an accounting error that’s being fixed.
Hu’s civil attorney, Kevin Tung, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
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