Dead men don’t tell tales — but they do sign off on construction projects in New York City.
Two firms hired to guard against worker injuries at building sites across Manhattan routinely lied on documents — including using the signature of a dead safety manager, authorities announced Wednesday.
The scam was unearthed last summer when a city inspector noticed discrepancies at construction projects signed off on by a site safety manager named Michael Hearty, officials said.
The inspector made a call to Hearty and got his widow. Hearty had died months before at 79.
The alarming discovery led to the indictment Wednesday of Hearty’s employer, Avanti Building Consultants of Staten Island, and NYCB Engineering of Queens, officials said.
Avanti recruited short-order cooks, hotel bellhops, hairdressers — and even a musician via Craigslist — to be “runners” who were sent to job sites to sign safety logs in their own names or with the names of actual site safety managers, said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
A grand jury indicted Avanti and NYCB, plus seven employees, following a lengthy probe by the city’s Department of Investigation.
“We’re very lucky no one was hurt,” Vance said in announcing the takedown. “They didn’t just scam the system. They put in danger the people” at the sites and passersby.
All told, the city found the two firms filed 450 false documents at 40 sites in Manhattan, from Fifth Ave. luxury apartments to an office building near Wall St. to an apartment building in exclusive Gramercy Park.
Department of Investigation Commissioner Mark Peters noted that the investigation was launched after the “very alert and savvy” buildings inspector discovered the signature of the dead site safety manager at numerous job sites.
Some site safety managers at NYCB, meanwhile, claimed they’d inspected 14 sites a day, an impossible task because the city requires managers to spend at least two hours a day at a site.
Peters and Vance announced charges against the two firms and against Avanti managers Richard Marini, 60, and Richard Sfraga, 49; NYCB Vice President Kishowar Pervez, 40, and four other employees.
Officials said they expect to make additional arrests.
With Barbara Ross
