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Post: Building inspectors in drug, bribe, mob flap

By Michael P. Ventura | October 29, 2009 11:56pm | Updated on September 8, 2009 9:23am

Six inspectors from the Department of Buildings, some with mob ties, were videotaped taking bribes and dealing cocaine and prescription drugs, the New York Post reports, citing unnamed sources.

The inspectors are due to be arrested later this month, the paper says, for taking payoffs to ignore building violations and expedite building permits. Nearly two dozen members of the Lucchese crime family are also supposed to be picked up, according to the Post's sources.

"This is going to be big," a Post source says.

The arrests will be the result of a near two-year probe that began in New Jersey and eventually spread across the Hudson River. The NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney's office have been conducting surveillance and wiretapping those allegedly involved in the graft.

Most of the construction projects were in the Bronx, but landlords in Manhattan are also being probed. Nearly 50 search warrants have been executed in "city offices, mob-run social clubs, wire-rooms and wiseguy's homes."

In addition to catching building inspectors taking $50 and $100 payoffs to look the other way on violations, probers also saw them peddling OxyContin, Vicadin and even cocaine while on the job, the paper says.
Two of the inspectors are reportedly cooperating with authorites.