That Thugs Masquerading As Goo-Goos Can Pull This Off Says Something About The Regulatory Atmosphere In This City
You mean you don’t know who the Committee on Contract Compliance is? Pay up:
Posted: February 27th, 2008 | Filed under: Jerk Move[T]wo thoroughly modern shakedown artists have been successfully looting hundreds of construction sites around the city — using little more than a pair of hardhats, a couple of official-looking clipboards and a cellphone, prosecutors said yesterday.
“These guys were pretty sophisticated,” Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said as he announced the indictment of alleged enlightened extortionists Anthony Lewis and Kyle Correll.
The alleged scheme started back in 2005 for Lewis, 38, of Brownsville, Brooklyn – an ex-con swindler weighing some 400 pounds — and his accused sidekick Correll, 36, of Far Rockaway, Queens.
That’s when the two decided to incorporate themselves as “The Committee on Contract Compliance.”
They had hardhats lettered — in blue — with the bogus but important-sounding name. They carried clipboards and video cameras.
Thus outfitted, prosecutors said, the hard-hatted hoods would show up at small construction sites around town, targeting mostly Asian and Middle Eastern operations, tooling around in Lewis’ Lincoln Navigator and hitting as many as a dozen a day.
“We’re the Committee on Contract Compliance,” they’d allegedly announce to the site foreman. “You have serious safety violations. Hand us some cash, and we won’t shut you down.”
Some forked over a couple of hundred dollars immediately, to make the nuisance go away. Go jump in a lake, many of their other targets would respond, easily realizing the pair had no governmental affiliation.
That’s when Lewis would allegedly get on his cellphone and start dialing city and federal agencies.
Lewis and Correll had learned the right vocabulary, how to report just the kind of false violation that would get a firetruck, a cop car or a regulator to descend on the site immediately, said DA investigations chief Daniel Castleman.
The resulting inspection would shut down the job at a ruinous cost. That’s when Lewis and Correll would show up again, prosecutors said — asking the frantic victims if they had thought things over. More likely than not, the victims had.
Victims forked over anywhere from $300 to $10,000, prosecutors said.