Former top Adams aide Ingrid Lewis-Martin and Jesse Hamilton, who oversees the city’s office leases, face charges for steering city contracts to specific real developers and helping fast-track their projects in exchange for personal home renovations and other perks.
Four new indictments accuse Lewis-Martin of accepting $75,000 in bribes between March 2022 and November 2024, as part of a wide-ranging scheme involving eight co-defendents, including Hamilton, who is the deputy commissioner of real estate services at the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. Hamilton is named as a defendant in one of the four indictments.
Most of the bribe money, $50,000, was directed to an account run by her son, Glenn Martin II, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. Other alleged bribes were less conventional, including thousands of dollars worth of catered food at Gracie Mansion and a speaking role on a television show.
Lewis-Martin, who resigned last year as Mayor Eric Adams’ chief aide, was already indicted in December on charges that she intervened on behalf of hoteliers seeking construction approvals in exchange for more than $100,000 in bribes to her and her son.
Much like the first set of charges, the latest indictments largely center around the city’s dealings with private real estate companies. The complaints accuse Lewis-Martin using her position in the Adams administration to help out developers Tian Ji Li and Yechiel Landau.
Arthur Aidala, an attorney for Lewis-Martin, said his client’s only “so-called offense” was “helping fellow citizens navigate the City’s outdated and often overwhelming bureaucracy.”
“At no point did she receive a single dollar or any personal benefit for her assistance,” he said in a statement. “Yet, the District Attorney seeks to portray a dedicated and honest public servant as a criminal. This is not justice—it is a distortion of the truth and a troubling example of politically motivated ‘lawfare.’”
According to one of the new indictments, Lewis-Martin pushed Hamilton and other city officials to direct contracts for asylum seeker shelter sites to property owners favored by developer Tian Ji Li. As part of his arrangement with the property owners, Li received 10 percent of the contract’s value. In February 2023, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation entered a $12 million licensing agreement with one of the owners, netting Li $1.2 million, according to the indictment. He allegedly transferred $50,000 worth of that haul to Martin II’s account.
The indictment describes Lewis-Martin pressuring Hamilton, who helped oversee the selection of sites, to consider the properties preferred by Li. On May 25, 2024, Lewis-Martin called Hamilton to make this clear: “I want you all to go back to the sites for TJ Li…I need those done…whatever site TJ wants, I need him to get them. Because that’s our fucking people,” she said, according to the indictment.
She called back a few days later to say: “Can you make sure that when I’m sending you a fucking site, [John Doe # 2] finds the site I fucking send you,” the indictment details. Hamilton allegedly confirmed to Lewis-Martin in a June 25 call: “TJ, he’s, he’s first. He’s first in line.”
Lewis-Martin also allegedly helped speed up approvals for a karaoke bar Li was building in Queens.
Another indictment accuses Lewis-Martin of intervening on behalf of developer Yechiel Landau on a project at 498 Columbia Street in Red Hook, 1211 Southern Boulevard in the Bronx and an unidentified apartment complex in Jamaica, Queens.
At the Bronx property, Lewis-Martin allegedly put pressure on HPD to get the agency’s approval to refinance and buy out a previous investor on the city-subsidized property. The agency signed off on Landau’s takeover of the property before it assigned a project manager to work with him to ensure the preservation of affordable housing at the building, according to the indictment.
In exchange for Lewis-Martin’s help, Landau allegedly paid for more than $5,000 worth of renovation work at her home. At the time, Lewis-Martin’s sister had been living with her and needed a place to stay while the work was being done, according to the indictment. Hamilton agreed to let her sister stay on a lower level of his house, which Landau paid to have cleaned and repainted to accommodate the move, prosecutors allege.
The indictment describes messages between the three on encrypted messaging app Signal on July 12, 2023 as Lewis-Martin simultaneously tried to get other city officials to focus on the Red Hook project.
That day Lewis-Martin asked then-Deputy Mayor for Housing, Economic Opportunity and Workforce Maria Torres-Springer to “zip out” of a meeting with Mayor Eric Adams about hate crimes to join a call with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development “for a hot minute to just give your blessings.”
She immediately followed up with: “I know the mayor is major priority, but if you could skip out for second. They had been bugging the stuffings out of me,” according to the indictment.
Two minutes later, she messaged Landau, saying that Torres-Springer’s chief of staff joined the call with HPD. She also assured him: “I promise you that your project is priority,” she wrote, according to the indictment.
Eight minutes later, Landau messaged Lewis-Martin and her son, lamenting that an HPD employee was “giving push back” on the project’s financing closing in December. The residential project was going to be developed using various city subsidy programs for senior and low-income housing.
Lewis-Martin’s son, who is accused of serving as an intermediary, allegedly responded with “[Expletive] him we make it close.”
The indictment describes Lewis-Martin speaking to the deputy mayor and then sending multiple text messages — sometimes several in one day — to then-HPD Commissioner Adolfo Carrión demanding to know what was holding up the project.
“I need to know what they are missing which is preventing them from moving forward. Thank you,” she sent to the commissioner on July 28, 2023, according to the indictment.
The next day she followed up with: “We need to get it done,” then adding, “December.”
She also asked Carrión to send a document detailing “the order of the projects,” referring to HPD’s pipeline, according to the indictment.
Lewis-Martin also allegedly met with Landau and his personal consultant on the project without HPD. She told the two: “We’re gonna, we gotta get that place [HPD] under control, so when we [expletive] tell them something, we expect them to make that shit move… I’m gonna speak to the Mayor, and then that’s it, so we’re just gonna push for December [2024] and we’re gonna keep it going,” according to the indictment.
The project closed in December, despite the fact that “hundreds of projects are in HPD’s pipeline, but only a few are able to close each calendar year,” a press release from the Manhattan District Attorney and Department of Investigations notes.
On September 11, 2023, Lewis-Martin sent a text message to Hamilton alluding to the renovations planned at her home: “Ah, we will get it done. I called my contractors to advise,” according to the indictment.
In October 2023, Lewis-Martin texted her sister: “I am excited that soon you will live in a quality home. You are deserving. Jesse’s place will be ready for your review. It needs paint but we just need it clean… I told them we needed to move you in ASAP.”
Another indictment accuses Lewis-Martin of conspiring with Gina and Anthony Argento, the owners of the film and production studio Broadway Stages, to get the Department of Transportation to change its planned redesign of McGuinness Boulevard in Brooklyn, which would have added protected bike lanes. The Argentos opposed the plan, not wanting vehicle traffic to be reduced near Broadway Stages.
In exchange for Lewis-Martin’s help, the Argentos allegedly paid her $2500, spent $10,000 to cater an event at Gracie Mansion and provided her a speaking role on the TV show, “Godfather of Harlem.” Anthony Argento also allegedly promised to be her agent and to get her more roles on that show as well as another, “Blue Bloods.”
The indictments come as the mayor faces an uphill battle to re-election. Adams was able to shed his own criminal charges this year, but his inner circle has not been so lucky.
News surfaced nearly a year ago that state investigators were looking into Lewis-Martin and Hamilton. In October, state officials had seized the phones of Lewis-Martin, Hamilton and Cushman & Wakefield broker Diana Boutross as they returned from a vacation in Japan.
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Hamilton’s hold: How an Adams ally wields power over NYC leases
“Ingrid is needed”: Real estate investors, Adams aide charged in $100K bribery scheme
