In another mayoral administration, Mike Mazzio might have had a tough time opening doors at City Hall as he campaigned for a potentially lucrative contract for his truck-towing company.
For one thing, Mazzio had been charged by the Manhattan District Attorney in an indictment alleging that he participated in a mobbed-up “fraudulent monopoly” that controlled the city’s entire towing industry. What’s more, before Eric Adams was elected mayor, the city had refused to renew his company’s towing license after determining that it had overcharged hundreds of customers.
But after throwing a campaign fundraiser for Adams that generated nearly $400,000 and hiring a lobbyist with longstanding ties to the mayor, Mazzio’s company, Mike’s Heavy Duty Towing, found a place on the schedules of multiple top administration officials, including some of the mayor’s closest advisors, an investigation by THE CITY shows.
Mazzio’s offensive is a case study in how, until law enforcement investigations upended the Adams administration, supporters were able to win the ear of the mayor and some of his closest advisors despite serious integrity problems. Dubious deal-making continues to shadow City Hall as Adams gears up a re-election campaign in the aftermath of the dismissal of his own corruption charges at the Trump administration’s behest.
To penetrate the Adams administration, the tow truck operator hired as his lobbyist a former colleague of the mayor’s: Jeff Klein, who served as a state senator with Adams and was an ally. Three City Hall officials targeted by Mazzio or Klein have either been charged since then with soliciting bribes or are currently under investigation in connection with city contracts.
They include Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the mayor’s chief advisor and closest aide, who has been indicted on corruption charges, and Tim Pearson, a close Adams confidante, who is the subject of a pay-to-play investigation by the Manhattan U.S. attorney and the city Department of Investigation (DOI).
Mazzio’s goal was to win City Hall approval to tow big rigs illegally parked overnight in residential neighborhoods via a pilot program — a trial that can give participants a leg up in the awarding of a much larger project to come. Pilot participants can be designated without the usual competitive bidding process, allowing the deal to be arranged out of view and without public oversight.
His path was a well trod one, previously documented by THE CITY, with prospective vendors hawking projects to top decision makers with help from friends and associates of the mayor.
There was the Saferwatch “panic button,” an app school safety officers could activate in the event of a fire or active shooter — offered by a client of consultant Terence Banks who pitched its wares to his brothers, schools Chancellor David Banks and Deputy Mayor Phil Banks. All the Banks brothers are under investigation for the deal.
There were the Bus Patrol cameras installed in school buses to catch miscreants passing stop signs as kids got on and off the vehicles, arranged with the help of a top aide to Phil Banks who later got a high-salaried job with the company.
And there were fast charge stations for electric vehicles produced by was Gravity Technologies, whose CEO hosted a campaign fundraiser for Adams and hired the lobbying firm of Adams’ former chief of staff, Frank Carone. The administration signaled it was hiring Gravity before publicly seeking bids from other companies.
Mike’s Heavy Duty Trucking never made it that far. Just weeks after Klein stopped representing him in September 2023, Mazzio was indicted again — this time charged with bribing Adams’ first Department of Buildings Commissioner, Eric Ulrich, with cash and Mets tickets. Mazzio has pleaded not guilty and his case is pending.
Brooklyn tow truck company owner Michael Mazzio was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court on bribery charges connected to indicted former Department of Buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich, Sept. 22, 2023. Credit: Alex Krales/THE CITY
Ulrich is a co-defendant with Mazzio. He is also charged in four related indictments and has pleaded not guilty.
Mazzio’s Comeback Campaign
The details of the Manhattan DA’s 2018 indictment show just how deep a hole Mazzio had to climb out of if he was to win city work. Alleging that the city’s towing industry was controlled by organized crime, the DA unsealed criminal charges against multiple tow firms in New York, including Mike’s.
Prosecutors alleged that companies without permits had been paying Mazzio to use his permit to remove vehicles from city highways as part of what they alleged was an illegal scheme to control the industry. In 2020, the city Department of Consumer and Worker Protection rejected the company’s permit renewal request, accusing the firm of gouging drivers with illegal fees of $150 to $300 per tow.
Mazzio started his redemption campaign by suing the city to get his company’s license back and won an injunction that let him continue operating. Adams’ campaign for mayor opened a new front for Mazzio.
On Aug. 8, 2021, he co-hosted a fundraiser for Adams at Russo’s on the Bay in Howard Beach, Queens, with Joseph and Anthony Livreri, owners of Aldo’s Pizzeria, the mayor’s favorite restaurant in neighboring Ozone Park. They raised $140,000 for Adams campaign. Donors included several of Mazzio’s relatives as well as vendors his company worked with, and the contributions generated more than $223,000 in public matching funds for the mayor’s campaign.
Two days after Christmas 2021, Mazzio and the Livreris got a sit-down dinner with the newly elected mayor at Aldo’s, even though Mazzio was a defendant in a criminal case.
In January 2022, the first month of the Adams administration, Mazzio spoke with Lewis-Martin, about allowing him to tow vehicles off highways during snowstorms and banning a competitor from towing on the city’s highways, prosecutors would later allege. A few months after that conversation, he dined with Lewis-Martin and Ulrich, whom Adams had named as a senior advisor and would later appoint buildings commissioner, at the Upper East Side restaurant Philippe Chow, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors later revealed that they had been secretly monitoring Ulrich’s phone and those of people close to him. They reported that they had overheard one of Mazzio’s associates claim that Ulrich had recommended a candidate to run “Consumers”— a reference to the city department that had rejected a Mike’s Heavy Duty license renewal.
“That’s a big deal for Mike,” the associate stated.
Bringing in Klein
Enter Klein, who knew Adams well from their senate days more than a decade ago. Klein was the architect of the breakaway Independent Democratic Conference (IDC), which often sided with Republicans for control of the Senate. Adams was a frequent ally of the group. On at least one occasion the pair co-sponsored legislation, a bill to help victims of home foreclosures.
Signing up Mike’s Heavy Duty for a year’s worth of lobbying work starting in August 2022, Klein soon won his meetings with the high-ranking Adams officials, which were aimed at winning Mazzio a role in a program the NYPD was rolling out to crack down on the illegally parked tractor trailers.
Senate Independent Conference leader Jeff Klein speaks at a press conference with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, April 4, 2018. Credit: Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Office
The program, named Operation Heavy Duty Enforcement, sought to target 18-wheelers parking overnight in residential neighborhoods, a problem that had grown worse with the surge in e-commerce warehouses across the city. Maspeth, Queens, was among the neighborhoods that bore the brunt of the problem.
“You have commercial vehicles almost every night,” said Councilmember Bob Holden (D-Queens). “I have had 700 calls [into the NYPD] so far this year. It is a huge problem. There’s limited parking in my entire district. To be taken up by these trucks? Sometimes you have 18 wheelers?”
Holden says he’s had success working with the NYPD to confront this problem, but the department has few trucks big enough to haul away scofflaw big rigs — a limitation that causes weeks of delay in getting results.
“They have four tow trucks,” Holden said. “We always are told to wait til we get the heavy duty trucks. It takes weeks.”
The launch of the operation in August 2022 involved dozens of cops hitting hot spots with summonses, books, wheel-clamps known as “boots” and NYPD tow trucks.
At about that time, the office of Philip Banks, Adams’ then deputy mayor for public safety, and Tim Pearson, then his senior advisor, became involved in the truck parking problem, according to Banks’ and Pearson’s official schedules and city lobbying records.
Over several months between September 2022 into August 2023, Klein pitched Mazzio’s services to Frank Hernandez, an NYPD lieutenant assigned to Banks’ office, and Pearson, records show.
It appears that at the time Mazzio was aware that he was, once again, under investigation. A tell-tale sign, prosecutors would later allege, came when Mazzio, Ulrich and an unnamed John Doe met on May 9, 2022, at the Cross Bay Diner in Queens and all placed their cellphones on a windowsill 10 feet from where they were sitting, presumably to keep them out of monitoring range.
That November, Ulrich resigned as buildings commissioner as reports surfaced that he was under investigation.
Klein continued to lobby on Mazzio’s behalf through 2022 and well into 2023, records show, and attended a “pilot program virtual meeting” with Hernandez and NYPD officials in February 2023. For his effort Klein collected a total of $85,000 in payments from the firm, records show.
In response to THE CITY’s questions, Klein confirmed via text that, “During the period of August 8th 2022 – August 8th 2023 I offered advice and counsel to this business, which specializes in large vehicle towing, and facilitated a meeting with Lt. Frank Hernandez of the Office of Public Safety whose office was seeking help with their growing need to tow illegally parked tractor trailers in residential neighborhoods. Ultimately, the NYPD chose to go in a different direction.”
“Mike’s Heavy Duty Towing is no longer a client,” he added.
The morning of Sept. 13, 2023, five weeks after Klein’s representation of Mike’s ended, Mazzio was arrested along with Ulrich and five co-defendants. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s sweeping indictment accused multiple players — including Mazzio — of bribing Ulrich for a variety of favors.
Also charged were two co-hosts with Mazzio of the Adams fundraiser at Russo’s on the Bay — the owners of Aldo’s Pizza, Joseph and Anthony Livreri. (The Livreris have pleaded not guilty.)
That morning Mazzio pleaded not guilty in the Ulrich case, but two weeks later he and his company resolved the 2018 mob-related case by pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of attempted agreement in restraint of trade.
The Ulrich bribery case is pending. On Friday, Mazzio’s criminal defense attorney, James Froccaro, declined to comment.
Mazzio, meanwhile, continues his fight with the consumer protection department. His company won its 2020 licensing lawsuit early last year, a ruling the consumer department is now appealing. But meanwhile, in December 2024 DCPW rejected Mazzio’s application to renew his tow operator license, finding that he was not a person of “good moral character.”
Earlier this month, Mazzio sued.
The denial of his license renewal will “result in the demise of my company along with my reputation and goodwill,” Mazzio stated in court papers. His attorney, Melanie Wiener of the law firm Abrams Fensterman, said a Brooklyn judge granted her request for a temporary stay while the case plays out. The consumer department got the case moved to Manhattan court.
Abandoned Trucks
In the end, City Hall and the NYPD decided not to hire private tow truck firms to attack the problem of overnight truck parking in residential areas.
Why is an unanswered question.
A spokesperson for the mayor said they could not provide information on that decision because the aides involved in the discussions — Pearson and Hernandez — no longer work for the administration. Pearson and Hernandez’ boss Phil Banks both resigned last fall after law enforcement seized their phones as part of a web of ongoing investigations into whether top Adams’ aides have used their influence to benefit themselves. (The Lieutenant Benevolent’s Association relayed a message to Hernandez from THE CITY on Friday to Hernandez. Hernandez did not respond to the request.)
Trucks parked long-term along a public park in Southeast Queens, March 27, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Lewis-Martin pleaded not guilty to charges that she used her influence to help out two businessmen who provided $100,000 to her son to buy a Porsche. The businessmen have stated the money was a loan, not a gift.
The tow program has remained an in-house NYPD initiative with the department relying strictly on its own trucks to do the job, according to the department’s press office. Operation Heavy Duty targeted the 113th Precinct in Queens and lasted two weeks from Aug. 15 to Aug. 26, 2022. All told, 1,142 summonses were issued, 148 boots were installed and 100 vehicles were towed.
Since then the department has conducted periodic overnight joint operations in rotating precincts in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx. Through last month, these operations have issued 5,330 summonses, clamped on 1,780 boots and towed away 2,170 vehicles.
The crackdown on illegal overnight truck parking resurfaced last month with a new effort dubbed the “Overnight Truck Parking Pilot” that sets aside spaces for big rigs in three neighborhoods, charging truck operators a parking fee via an app managed by the Department of Transportation. The mayor called the plan “a win-win that will add 45 spaces for tractor trailers to communities long burdened by unregulated truck parking.”
The DOT specified streets inside industrial business zones in three neighborhoods: Flatlands in Brooklyn, Hunts Point in the Bronx and Maspeth. A data analysis by THE CITY found that the pilot targets just two of the 10 community districts with the highest number of 311 complaints about this ballooning urban headache.
Last week, a DOT spokesperson said the agency does not yet have any data to share on the success of the app program.
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