For 16 years, Vornado’s Glen Weiss labored facet by facet with one among his star leasing agents, selling him by way of the corporate and even visiting his suburban New Jersey house.
It didn’t happen to Weiss that he may need to look over his colleague’s offers with the attention of a legal investigator.
“I trusted Jared Solomon,” Weiss testified Wednesday, the second day of Solomon’s criminal fraud trial, within the Southern District of New York.
However for many of that point, Solomon allegedly pulled off an elaborate deception, presenting Weiss with pretend enterprise paperwork to cost Vornado upwards of $10 million for work that was by no means performed.
Weiss, Vornado’s leasing chief and a 40-year veteran of the corporate, interviewed Solomon in 2007 and employed him. It was his job to assessment and log out on the leasing offers his younger report negotiated.
Solomon was one among about six leasing brokers below Weiss’ supervision and likewise held a regulation diploma. His portfolio included a digital billboard at Vornado’s 1540 Broadway, on the bow tie in Instances Sq.. The signal is on the coronary heart of the federal authorities’s fraud case in opposition to Solomon.
The signal, which is recognizable to many who go to the Crossroads of the Earth, has displayed adverts for corporations like HBO, VH1 and Allied Financial institution.
“Very extremely fascinating,” Glenn described the billboard.
One of many corporations that leases the signal is the multinational electronics firm LG. It does so by way of a Hudson Sq.-based media firm named Havas Media.
From his perch at Vornado, Solomon in 2015 negotiated an settlement with Havas to lease the signal for six years at a price of $4.5 million. An government who labored for the corporate on the time testified that Havas had no dealer representing it within the negotiations.
However Solomon submitted a pair of invoices to Weiss totaling $1.5 million to be paid to an organization known as Margoux Media, which Solomon stated was Havas’ dealer. In actuality, Margoux Media is an organization created by Solomon.
An worker from JP Morgan Chase testified that Solomon opened a checking account within the identify of Margoux Media on the Chase department throughout the road from Vornado’s headquarters at 888 Seventh Avenue. To do that, he offered a enterprise certificates that ought to have been filed with the Manhattan County Clerk’s workplace — however the clerk testified he may discover no such certificates on file. (One of many counts the U.S. Legal professional’s workplace has charged Solomon with is a financial institution fraud cost in opposition to JPMorgan.)
Through the years, Vornado paid a number of invoices to Margoux Media totaling $8.6 million. It made extra funds to different brokerages and to a contractor that prosecutors allege Solomon concocted in an identical method.
Nonetheless, in opening statements on Tuesday his protection legal professional, Peter Toumbekis, stated Margoux Media and the others had been bonafide brokerages. He stated when Vornado came upon that Solomon was behind the businesses, it acquired offended and assumed a legal intent.
“They’re actual corporations,” Toumbekis stated. “What they didn’t know … [was] Jared owned the businesses. They came upon and acquired upset.”
By the primary two days of the trial, Toumbekis has not known as any witnesses who may assist that concept. Nor did he ask Weiss any questions that might make his case.
A minimum of one query stays unanswered: The prosecution by no means requested Weiss how Vornado finally found Solomon’s alleged scams.
Weiss did say that Vornado has a conflict-of-interest coverage barring staff from working as brokers representing Vornado tenants. If he had found Solomon’s connection to Margoux Media in the course of the LG offers, the results would have been swift.
“I might’ve instantly informed him to cease discussions with LG and he would’ve been fired,” he defined.
Weiss additionally shed some mild on a subject that’s come up over the course of the case: Solomon’s perceived affluence.
The prosecution stated Solomon used the cash he stole to “to fund a way of life he had not earned,” together with a home within the Westchester suburbs, an Higher East Facet co-op, a Porsche and a rustic membership membership.
Earlier than the trial, Toumbekis tried to stop prosecutors from presenting sure proof that he stated may create a “wealth-based bias.” Individuals who knew Solomon informed The Actual Deal that there had lengthy been whispers about how he may fund his luxurious life-style on his wage.
Weiss testified that Solomon earned a wage in 2009 of roughly $160,000 — a determine that climbed to greater than $772,000 in 2023. He stated Solomon would typically level out that brokers made extra money than he did, and that he appeared fixated on the properties, vehicles and materials possessions others owned.
Weiss stated Solomon would ask why he wasn’t being paid extra at their bi-annual efficiency critiques, in addition to in informal conversations.
“He was usually dissatisfied along with his compensation,” he stated.
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