A federal judge in Brooklyn tentatively set an August trial date in the corruption case against Frank Carone, a high-ranking member of former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, who was indicted last week in an alleged bribery scheme.
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U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto said the trial would commence in late summer, but acknowledged that the case’s complexity could ultimately delay the start date.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Winik said the government plans to provide the defendants with a “voluminous” amount of discovery, totaling millions of pages.
The government is also in the process of extracting data from devices that law enforcement recently seized, Winik added.
Still, a lawyer for Carone, Andrew Goldstein, pushed for the trial to begin “as soon as possible,” adding that the federal government has spent years “digging into every aspect of our client’s life.”
“We’re going to push to keep the August trial date,” Goldstein said. “If it moves, we are going to push to keep it as soon as possible.”
Federal prosecutors claim Carone, 56, the former chief of staff to New York’s ex-mayor, accepted a series of bribes from a hotel owner in exchange for steering a multi-million dollar contract to operate the hotel as an emergency migrant shelter in 2022 at the height of the migrant crisis.
Before Carone intervened, the hotel owner, Yan Po Zhu, was repeatedly rejected by city officials over the hotel’s small size and location in Long Island City, prosecutors said.
Zhu paid Frank Carone a total of $120,000 for the $6.8 million contract, according to the indictment. The top Eric Adams adviser then allegedly used the ill-gotten gains for his personal benefit, including paying off credit card bills.
In order to conceal the scheme and hide the bribes, prosecutors say Zhu entered into a sham retainer agreement with Carone’s younger brother, Anthony Carone, 54, who allegedly laundered the payments through his law firm.
In 2022 alone, Anthony Carone funneled his brother $500,000 through his law firm bank account, prosecutors said.
Anthony Carone, Zhu, and his business manager, Crystal Chen, were also named in the 13-count indictment.
All four defendants have since pleaded not guilty.
