December 27, 2005
Hevesi's Investigations Unit Builds Prosecutable Cases
By MICHAEL COOPER, NY TIMES

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ALBANY, Dec. 23 - Being a comptroller can be frustrating. You send out a small army of auditors to root out inefficiencies in state and local governments, and from time to time they uncover what looks like criminal corruption. But prosecutors do not always jump on their findings - maybe they are understaffed, or busy with other things, or just not sure if a hunch by some number crunchers is worth a painstaking investigation.

So State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi has established a new Division of Investigations in his office that is responsible for looking into possible criminal activity and building solid cases that are more likely to be pursued by prosecutors.

"Instead of just sending mere suspicions to a prosecutor, we now do the forensic work, do the investigative work," Mr. Hevesi said.

The marriage of green eyeshades and shoe leather is bearing fruit, officials say. Over the past three years the state comptroller's office has referred 73 cases to prosecutors, resulting in 33 arrests, on cases ranging from small-town highway superintendents and village justices who later pleaded guilty to stealing from their towns, to the widespread school board corruption cases in Nassau County on Long Island.

Its investigations have begun to ripple through the world of lucrative state contracting. An investigation by the division recently led the state to block a $46 million contract to Worth Construction, which had been hired to build an interchange between the New York State Thruway and Interstate 84 near Newburgh. The division found that the company was under investigation by the federal government in another state, had ties to organized crime, and had failed to give complete answers on its vendor questionnaire.

The man in charge of the division is Robert T. Brackman, the deputy comptroller for investigations, a blunt-spoken former prosecutor and former deputy commissioner in New York City's Department of Investigation. Mr. Brackman, who also worked for Mr. Hevesi in the New York City comptroller's office, has assembled a staff of former police detectives and law enforcement officials who do everything from knock on doors to work with state auditors to conduct surveillance.

"We try to build cases that we can present to prosecutors that will get their interest," Mr. Brackman said here in a recent interview.

Prosecutors say the unit has been useful. "They've been invaluable to us on the Rosalyn school district investigation, and on other school district cases," said Patrick McCormack, chief assistant district attorney of Nassau County. "Because they have investigators, they go at the audit with the background of what a prosecutor needs." Because Bob Brackman used to be a prosecutor, he knows what makes a good case."

Some cases, the office just stumbles upon - like the extra parking ticket fees that were being collected in a small village upstate.

That case began when an auditor for the comptroller's office who had once paid a $135 parking fine in the village of Perry, in upstate New York, was later assigned to audit the court. She noticed that the amount entered in court records did not match what she had paid. The audit found that the court clerk, Ruth Milks, had been adding $35 to tickets and pocketing the difference, amounting to tens of thousands of dollars. After the investigations unit helped present the case to prosecutors, Ms. Milks pleaded guilty and paid $59,000 in restitution

Then there was the audit that snared a Long Island mayor. An audit of the village of Farmingdale caught the eye of the investigations unit and led to the arrest of Joseph Trudden, the former mayor of Farmingdale, who pleaded guilty in April to filing false documents to conceal more than $2,000 worth of personal meals and drinks that he charged to his village credit card.

Others cases come from tips, like the bogus tree stump removal. Complaints to the comptroller's office and local news reports led the division to conduct a four-month investigation of Scott Prior, the highway superintendent of Schroeppel (pronounced scruple), a town of about 8,500 in upstate New York. The investigation accused the superintendent of charging the town for the removal of tree stumps that he never removed, among other things. The state attorney general's office brought charges, and Mr. Prior pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, resigned and made restitution to the town.

Mr. Hevesi said that the unit gave extra muscle to his small army of 350 state and local auditors. "Where no one is looking," he said, "there will be a dramatic increase in mismanagement or corruption."