12 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • NOVEMBER 2021
WEB BRIEFS LI AT A GLANCE
LI GETS NEW TOP FEDERAL
PROSECUTOR
Breon Peace was sworn in on Oct. 15 as the next U.S.
Attorney for the Eastern District of New York during a
ceremony led by Chief District Judge Margo K. Brodie
at the Brooklyn federal courthouse.
President Joe Biden appointed Peace to the position,
in which he leads a staff of about 163 assistant U.S.
attorneys responsible for all federal criminal and civil
cases throughout Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island,
Nassau, and Suff olk.
“I look forward to leading the offi ce’s incredibly talented
and dedicated women and men in addressing
present and future challenges in the Eastern District,”
Peace said. “We will continue to work tirelessly with
our law enforcement partners to pursue equal justice
under the law, and protect and serve the people of the
district. I am eager to get to work.”
Peace
previously practiced law as a partner
at Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP in New
York City, where he worked for the past 25 years
and was a member of the fi rm’s white-collar defense
and investigations and litigations groups. Peace has
additional experience serving as a law clerk and an
assistant attorney in the Eastern District.
-Briana Bonfi glio
3 EX-NAT GRID WORKERS FROM LI
ADMIT KICKBACK SCHEME
Three former employees of National Grid from Long
Island have admitted to taking hundreds of thousands
of dollars in kickbacks from a company to which the
foursome steered lucrative utility contracts.
Patrick McCrann, 57, of Selden, and Richard Zavada, 65,
of Hicksville, pleaded guilty Oct. 4 at Brooklyn federal
court to accepting bribes and kickbacks from the owners
of a Long Island-based contractor a week aft er Ricardo
Garcia, 48, of Stroudsburg, Penn. and Jevan Seepaul, 36,
of Rockville Centre, also pleaded guilty in the same case.
“The defendants have admitted to accepting thousands
of dollars in bribes and
kickbacks for their own enrichment and to subverting
the no-bid process for awarding contracts,” said
Jacquelyn M. Kasulis, acting United States Attorney
for the Eastern District of New York.
Prosecutors said the contractor secured more than
$50 million in facility maintenance contracts from
National Grid during the time that the contractor
was paying bribes
to the four men, who had the authority to approve
“no-bid” contracts valued at less than $50,000.
-Timothy Bolger
EIGHT LIRR CONDUCTORS
Undercover investigators found eight train conductors
on the
Long Island Rail Road failed to
produce tickets collected from riders as
they were supposed to, violating their own agency
guidelines and fraud protections.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Office
of the Inspector General and investigators with
the Suffolk County district attorney’s office went
incognito on LIRR trains in 2019 and 2020, after
former conductor Robert Anderson was caught
pocketing tickets and giving them to friends and
family rather than sending them back to the agency,
and the auditors found eight more conductors who
didn’t properly dispose of the travel passes.
Conductors are trained to “service” paper train
tickets by punching them up to three times to show
that they’re used, before taking them aft er the fi nal
punch, or “canceling” the ticket in transit jargon. At
the end of a shift , a conductor is supposed to drop off
an envelope with cancelled tickets at a station clerk
to be sent to the agency’s revenue offi cer for review.
In 2019, Anderson instead kept the tickets and gave
them away to friends and family to use.
On July 28, 2021, the scammer pleaded guilty to one
count of offi cial misconduct, a misdemeanor, paying a
$1,000 fi ne, and resigned from the commuter railroad
job.
The incident prompted the OIG to conduct the stings
on trains to see if any of Anderson’s colleagues were
also not sending in the used tickets as per policy. On
15 instances between November 2019 and September
2020, OIG and Suff olk County investigators rode the
LIRR trains and presented peak one-way tickets to
conductors. Eight of the transit workers later handed
in envelopes without the investigators’ tickets in
them or didn’t submit envelopes at all, the probe
found, and the total value of lost tickets used by
investigators was $249.
However,
the report
noted that investigators
couldn’t prove that
the eight conductors actually
used the tickets for personal gain. In
response to the fi ndings, LIRR sent each of
the eight employees a warning letter, saying that
any future such violation will result in disciplinary
action.
-Kevin Duggan, amNewYork Metro
FBI RAIDS NYPD
SGTS UNION BOSS’ LI HOME
The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the
Sergeants Benevolent Association’s offi ces in Lower
Manhattan on Oct. 5.
Federal investigators carried out a “law enforcement
operation” at the Worth Street offi ces and SBA
President Ed Mullins’ Long Island home “pursuant
to an ongoing investigation,” according to an FBI
spokeswoman.
The rep declined to provide any further details
about the raid, which was fi rst reported by the Daily
News, and local law enforcement and SBA reps also
remained mum on the matter.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Offi ce for the
Southern District of New York declined to comment.
The New York City Police Department referred questions
about the operation to the FBI.
An attorney for Mullins could not immediately be
reached for comment.
-Kevin Duggan, amNewYork Metro
IN THE NEWS
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/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
