Which Mayor Eric Adams aides have been raided by FBI?

Metro

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By Isabel Vincent and Jon Levine

The FBI raid on the home of Winnie Greco, one of Eric Adams’s closest advisors Thursday — just three months after another raid on his top fundraiser— casts new light on the shady cast of characters that surround New York City’s mayor.

Agents were seen leaving Greco’s home and another house she owns on the same street in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx, carrying out boxes and with a forensic photographer.

The FBI is investigating whether she used workers at the New World Mall in Flushing, Queens, as illegal “straw” donors, and also raided offices there. Adams celebrated Lunar New Year at the mall two weeks ago.

The FBI called 911 for Greco, 61, who was taken to the hospital with an undisclosed sudden health condition. She is now on sick leave from her $100,000-a-year job and has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Adams — asked about the latest troubling development involving Greco by NY1 on Friday morning — said, “I’ve been very clear, follow the rules.

“Follow the law, follow the rules. I said it throughout my entire law enforcement career, and I’ve said it in my public life as well,’’ the former NYPD captain said.

But it was just the latest move which casts an unflattering light on some of Adams’ closest retainers and friends — and which Democratic strategists say are a threat to his re-election in 2025.

One Democratic strategist told The Post of Adams’ inner circle: “He’s busy trying to be the mayor. Many of them appear busy trying to do other things.

“It’s partially about his style of management and partially people not being able to meet the moment.”

But the strategist warned: “If we lose Adams we will have chaos. It will be the moment when the left which has brought us to near destruction will find its moment in the sun.

“They will attack Israel and police and there will be no one to stand up against them. It will be the end of New York. Welcome to new Detroit.”

Another strategist said: “Mayor Adams ran on a popular agenda that mobilized New Yorkers who demanded a safe, strong city.

“His commitment is still there – but the concern is just so many distractions caused by a team that has too many soft spots and slip ups that knock the Mayor off course. It’s happening too often and New Yorkers see it.”

The China connection

Greco, 61, is a longtime advisor to Adams from his time as state senator and Brooklyn Borough President.

She was named the mayor’s director of Asian affairs shortly after he was inaugurated in 2022.

But The Post has revealed that she is also a paid “consultant” to Chinese Communist Party-backed organizations.

And before the FBI raid, she was already being probed by the city’s Department of Investigation over allegations that she used her position to get perks — including allegations she promised a 2021 campaign volunteer a job in the administration if he completed renovation work on her home.

She also allegedly asked another for a hefty donation in exchange for Gracie Mansion access.

Greco, who has described herself as being “patriotic overseas Chinese” — a term that refers to individuals who live outside of the country but maintain a strong sense of loyalty to the Chinese Community Party — has been named as a “consultant” by at least two Beijing-backed organizations: the Dong Guan Association of America and the Fujian Daily Southeast Network.

Her company took money from the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

She has also repeatedly attended events organized by the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries — which the State Department accuses of “malignly” influencing local leaders.

Greco — a Chinese immigrant who arrived in the city in the late 1990s — was last publicly seen with Adams at a gala in Cipriani Downtown held by Chinese state media to mark Lunar New Year, at which the mayor was gifted a Communist red scarf.

The new probe on illegal donations focuses on possible “straw donors,” someone whose name is used — either wittingly or unwittingly — on campaign finance forms to illegally funnel cash to candidates to dodge the law.

For instance, a donor with deep pockets who wants to give more than the maximum $10,000 — for example, $100,000 — might use nine other people’s names to donate $10,000 a pop to get the full amount of dough to his candidate’s campaign coffers.

The Turkish delight fundraiser

It is the second FBI raid in the space of little more than three months: In early November, federal agents descended on the Brooklyn home of Adams’s 25-year-old chief fundraiser Brianna Suggs, who had been a 2021 campaign staffer before a dizzying ascent.

The raid caused the mayor to abruptly return from Washington, DC, where he was set to meet with federal lawmakers about the migrant crisis. Suggs was removed from her role weeks later.

On the same day of the raid on Suggs’s Brooklyn home, the feds also raided the homes of City Hall staffer Rana Abbasova, director of protocol in the Office for International Affairs as well as the home of Cenk Ocal, a former Turkish Airlines executive who worked on Adams’ transition team.

A search warrant showed that investigators were seeking documents related to a small Turkish university, based in Washington DC and evidence that a Brooklyn-based construction company — KSK Construction Group — as well as Turkish government officials illegally donated to the mayor’s 2021 campaign.

Adams’ campaign accepted $6,000 in donations from donors who served on the board of a non-profit tied to the son of the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The investigation also focused on whether Adams used his influence during his tenure as Brooklyn borough president to get the Turkish consulate built in Manhattan despite fire hazard concerns.

The mayor’s 2021 campaign accepted five $2,000 donations from Bay Atlantic University employees during a September fundraiser that year. But they returned the cash 17 days later, according to a report in The City.

Abbasova was later suspended for telling staffers to delete texts after the FBI raided her home, a source told The Post.

The Bling Bishop

Adams also has close ties to Brooklyn pastor Lamor Whitehead, the high-rolling “bling bishop” who went on trial this week accused of a litany of crimes.

Among the charges: leveraging his friendship with Adams in order to extort cash in return for “favorable actions” in real estate deals.

Adams’ name is expected to come up repeatedly in the trial. Whitehead, 44, is accused of taking thousands of dollars from a Bronx body shop owner in exchange for promises to obtain “official favors” from Mayor Adams, who Whitehead said would “do whatever I wanted.”

The church leader claimed to be a “friend of the mayor of New York City,” prosecutor Jessica Greenwood said in her opening statement Monday, but in reality he “abused the trust” of his parishioners to fund his “extravagant lifestyle.”

The self-styled bishop’s attorney said in her opening statement that he will fight “like Rocky Balboa” to provide his innocence of charges which also include that he defrauded parishioners and burned the cash at Louis Vuitton, Footlocker, Grubhub, and on payments for a BMW.

The unindicted co-conspirator

Adams’ deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks,was an unindicted co-conspirator in a sweeping federal police corruption case.

Banks — brother of schools chancellor, David Banks — had been a rising NYPD star who quit suddenly as chief of department in 2014, claiming he had fallen out with then-commissioner Bill Bratton.

But it was revealed that the surprise move was after feds probed “hundreds of thousands” of dollars in Banks’ account as part of the investigation into Jona Rechnitz and Jeremy Reichberg, who bribed cops with hookers and jewelry and who were also Bill de Blasio donors.

Banks and correction officers union chief Norman Seabrook took trips with Rechnitz, an Upper West Side real estate investor, and Reichberg, a leader in Borough Park, Brooklyn, sources told The Post in 2016.

At least part of their bills were paid for by Rechnitz, sources said.

Banks also received two golf trips to the Dominican Republic, according to a government source, and got a free hotel stay in Israel, where he visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem with Rechnitz and Reichberg in October 2014.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

The perp-walked commish

Adams’ first Department of Buildings commissioner Eric Ulrich, was perp-walked when he surrendered to the Manhattan district attorney in September on 16 felony corruption charges of pocketing more than $150,000 in bribes when he was first an Adams advisor, then commissioner.

Ulrich, who moonlighted as a children’s book author, had resigned from the Adams administration in 2022, and was accused of accepting a premium Mets season tickets package valued at nearly $10,000, a discounted and fully furnished luxury apartment in a beachfront building in Rockaway Park, a bespoke suit and expensive artwork. 

The former Republican Ulrich, resigned from the Adams administration in November 2022 after it was revealed that he was under investigation and had turned his cellphone over as part of a criminal gambling probe. He is awaiting trial.