LOWER MANHATTAN — Mayor Bill de Blasio defended citywide ferry operator Hornblower Wednesday after DNAinfo New York revealed the company was under investigation for its link to a sometimes shady ticket trade.
The city asked the Department of Investigation to probe Hornblower after a DNAinfo story exposed the company's practice of hiring questionable companies that helped fuel a network of aggressive ticket sellers who were duping tourists who wanted to sail to the Statue of Liberty, sources said.
At an unrelated press conference Wednesday, de Blasio said that it was "normal" that the city initiated an investigation.
The city previously named Hornblower as the operator of a ferry service that will link Rockaway peninsula, Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Red Hook, Astoria and Long Island City to Manhattan and is expected to launch in 2017.
"We'll have an investigation, obviously we want to know what happened," de Blasio said.
"I think there's some early public evidence that this was well downstream and some bad apples who had nothing to do with the management of the company, but we're going to certainly look at it.
"In the meantime everything we're going to do on the ferry system is full speed ahead."
Hornblower had worked with several ticket resale companies run by men with criminal records, including one with a convicted rapist in charge while he was still in jail, DNAinfo previously reported.
The ferry operator would sell tickets in bulk for at least $50,000 at a time in cash to contractors. Those companies would then hire street vendors, many of whom had violent criminal backgrounds themselves, to sell the tickets at The Battery.
Meanwhile, police have arrested dozens of sellers as part of an ongoing investigation.
One ticket seller was arrested in February after he punched a tourist and fractured his skull, police said.
Hornblower said the company has stopped selling tickets at The Battery in recent months.
"Soon after the May DNAinfo article, Hornblower Cruises ceased making sightseeing tickets available to all third party street team operators. We are pleased that the City now has new regulations in place that govern ticket sales on the streets," the company said in a statement.
The DOI declined to comment.
