Frank Carone, a longtime Brooklyn energy dealer and former chief of employees to ex-mayor Eric Adams, is below federal investigation.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn are scrutinizing Carone’s enterprise dealings and his time inside Metropolis Corridor as a part of a long-running corruption inquiry, based on the New York Times. The probe has been energetic since at the least early 2024 and will nonetheless finish with out prices.
The investigation’s full scope stays unclear. But when it produces an indictment, it could add one other hit to the legacy of the Adams administration, which was battered by overlapping corruption probes into high aides and allies.
Carone, a lawyer and dominant determine in Brooklyn Democratic circles, was one in all Adams’s closest political confidants for greater than a decade. He performed a central position in Adams’s 2021 mayoral marketing campaign and served as chief of employees throughout the mayor’s first 12 months in workplace earlier than decamping for the non-public sector.
After leaving Metropolis Corridor in January 2023, Carone launched Oaktree Options, a consulting and lobbying agency that rapidly attracted purchasers throughout a number of industries. In Might 2024, federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas to a number of of these purchasers after acquiring the agency’s financial institution information, based on individuals with information of the inquiry. The subpoenaed purchasers spanned a variety of companies, together with actual property.
Later in 2024, investigators appeared to focus extra intently on actual property partnerships and different enterprise ventures tied to Carone, one individual conversant in the matter informed the Instances.
In an announcement, Carone denied wrongdoing, attributing the investigation to political animus and
resentment over his success. The FBI and the U.S. lawyer’s workplace for the Jap District of New York declined to remark.
The probe additionally brushes up in opposition to Carone’s former regulation agency, Abrams Fensterman, which has
been linked in civil litigation to sprawling insurance coverage fraud schemes alleged by Geico. Neither Carone nor the agency has been charged with wrongdoing, and each have stated they had been victims of fraud, not individuals.
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