Former FDNY Chief Brian Cordasco, convicted of fast-tracking safety inspections for business owners who paid him off, was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Monday.
Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Liman said what Cordasco did in the brazen pay-to-play bribery scheme that netted $190,000 was “a very serious crime” committed out of greed.
Acknowledging the 19-year FDNY vet’s record as a firefighter was “impeccable” before his promotion to the Bureau of Fire Protection in 2020, the judge said the term was essential to deter others from committing similar conduct.
“You betrayed the hardworking people under you, who perform such an important service for New York, and you betrayed the hardworking professionals you dealt with in the Bureau of Fire Protection and the clients whom they represent,” Liman said.
“The crime was opportunistic. You took advantage of your position, you took advantage of the COVID crisis,” the judge later said, adding Cordasco engaged in further wrongdoing by lying about his crimes.
Liman also imposed a term of two years of supervised release and said he’d recommend Cordasco serve his term at FCI Otisville in New York or FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey, low-security prisons close to the city, where he must surrender on June 17.
Cordasco, 50, a father of two young kids from Staten Island, retired last year. He admitted in October to pocketing thousands of dollars in ill-gotten gains by expediting inspections by the FDNY’s Bureau of Fire Prevention between 2021 and 2023, pleading guilty to one count of conspiring to solicit and receive bribes. His supervisor, Anthony Saccavino, copped to his role in the bribery conspiracy in January and is yet to be sentenced.
The case filed in September accused the two chiefs who oversaw safety inspections for large city buildings and projects of exploiting a backlog of inspections that piled up amid the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to enrich themselves.
In court Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Greenwood said the “extremely serious” conduct of the 19-year vet of the FDNY warranted a term of 3½ to four years in prison.
Greenwood said Cordasco’s crimes were not a one-time aberration but carried out over months and concealed by repeated lies. She said he sought bribes despite earning a generous salary and pension of $9,000 a month, which Greenwood noted had not been jeopardized by his conviction.
“The defendant simply was not satisfied. His salary of nearly $250,000 a year, his pension, all of that was not enough,” the prosecutor said. “There was no reason he had to engage in this scheme but for greed.”
Highlighting the shamelessness of his dishonesty, prosecutors noted in their sentencing memo that Cordasco had publicly slammed City Hall for directing the FDNY to give preferential treatment to select projects, saying it was “extremely unfair” to the general public while cheating the public behind closed doors.
Cordasco was part of a high-level email discussion about the use of a list compiled by City Hall under the de Blasio administration — including preferred buildings and projects that should get faster inspections — and fast-tracked inspections for 50 Hudson Yards and other projects, the feds alleged in the case.
Cordasco’s attorney, David Stern, asked the judge to weigh Cordasco’s notable public service against his crimes and requested that he serve his sentence at home.
He said his client might have been led astray by the culture at City Hall.
“When the mayor or the mayor’s office is telling people, ‘I want you to move these people up, because I want you to move them up,’ it breeds a kind of complacency about doing that. That doesn’t make it right,” Stern said. “I don’t think what the mayor did was [right], if the mayor did it.”
The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office secured an unrelated indictment against Adams about a week after Cordasco and Saccavino, partly accusing the mayor of taking bribes to force the FDNY to sidestep safety precautions. The Trump administration has sought to eliminate that case to ensure the mayor’s cooperation on immigration matters.
In comments to the court, the retired chief said he let down the civilian employees who worked for and alongside him at the FDNY bureau where he committed his crimes.
He said he reached out to a few over Thanksgiving but that the conversations were “awkward” and “there was no promise of speaking again.” Cordasco said he hadn’t received letters of support from anyone he contacted at the bureau.
“They deserve better than having their long-standing principles and procedures questioned by authorities because of my actions,” Cordasco said.
Originally Published:
