Cleaning House: New Management Staff at NYCERS

At the November 9, 2017 NYCERS Regular Board meeting, the new executive director notified the trustees that she was preparing a budget modification requesting four new positions. She stated that the full request would be presented at the December meeting for the trustees' approval. Interestingly, she added that this request would not involve any additional costs but only authorization to hire.

The four new positions are:

1. a second deputy executive director,
2. a deputy division director for administration,
3. a deputy division director for internal audit, and
4. a project director for the IT legacy replacement project.

Because of the scope of the legacy project, the new project director will need to take control of the IT division. There is currently staff serving in these four positions. It is not clear what will happen to those people.

I have previously written about the deputy executive director position and its current occupant.

The executive director appears to have also found other problems at NYCERS that require these new personnel. She stated at the meeting that she will provide rationale for these new positions at the next board meeting.

I suspect those problems will include questionable vendor contracts, a bloated administrative budget, inadequate agency oversight by the internal audit division, dubious HR practices and a lack of general IT management competence. Specifically, she probably has found serious design flaws and delays with the IT “legacy replacement project”.

In her review of the internal audit division, I also suspect that she has found issues with the redundant compliance division which doesn’t seem to have a legitimate function, but is a dumping grounds for personnel that need to be protected.

A Little Good News!

On Wednesday, September 14, the NYCERS executive director, Diane D'Alessandro, announced that she was retiring at the end of December.

Hopefully the exit of this vicious incompetent boss should provide most NYCERS employees with some relief from their daily stress at work. Of course it will create serious concerns for all the equally incompetent flunkies that she has hired over the last 11 years as well as some other specific employees that have done her dirty work during that time. I am referring to Karen Mazza, Felita Baksh/Ramsami/DiLorenzo, Kin Mak, and Liz Reyes among others.

There was a DOI investigation started in response to the Ellen Carton hiring. I suspect D'Alessandro wants to get out of Dodge before the sheriff arrives.

I sincerely hope that the trustees are able to clean house after she is gone. This agency has a totally adequate operating budget as opposed to other city agencies. It should be an example of almost perfect service to members and retirees as opposed to the arrogant dismissive operation that it is.

Assuming D'Alessandro has no pre-2001 NYS/NYC service, her pension will be about $50K/yr. based on a $217K/yr salary and 14 years of service. This is not a smart financial move. Six more years of service and 12% increase in salary would have increased her pension to $97K/yr.

My Wife Resigned from NYCERS in May of this Year

In May of this year my wife resigned from NYCERS about two years shy of the date she would have been able to retire. She started working at NYCERS in the fall of 1998. In December of 2003, she was promoted to Deputy Director of Administration by Milt Aron, the Deputy Executive Director.

Prior to that, starting in 1980, she worked at the Mayor’s Office, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Department of Homeless Services.

In June, 2005 she was demoted by Aron with the explicit approval of Martha Stark, Chair of the NYCERS Board of Trustees and the Finance Commissioner. She was demoted because of her relationship with me. She was forced back to her permanent civil service position and her salary was reduced by $14,000, the amount that she had been given when she was promoted.

From June of 2005 to May of 2015 my wife was given no work. She was told many times that there were strict orders from the executive staff that she was not to be given any work. Many times over the ten years she explicitly asked for work.

On a few rare occasions she was given some significant work but the minute the executive staff became aware of it, the work was stopped. Kin Mak could always be counted on to pass the word along to Karen Mazza about the work assignment.

In 2013 my wife was hospitalized for 12 days with acute ulcerative colitis.

In 2014, while driving to church on Palm Sunday, she had a major heart attack. She almost died on the side of the road. It was incredibly fortunate that she was at a stop sign and that her 16 year old daughter was with her in the car. The EMT’s were there in minutes and were able revive her with a defibrillator. She spent 18 days in the hospital. She was on reduced body temperature protocol for possible brain damage. She had double bypass surgery and another procedure for a defibrillator implant.

Both of these illnesses were directly caused by stress.

After both of these hospital events she returned to work. Both times she asked for work and both times NYCERS executive staff refused to assign her any work.

In the spring of 2015 the stress of being totally marginalized at NYCERS finally became too much of a threat to her health. She reluctantly resigned. At that point her salary was $104,000.

For many years now, I have been writing about the wretched way that NYCERS, and I mean D'Allesandro, Mazza, and Baksh/Ramsami, have treated members, retirees and NYCERS employees. I speak from personal experience.

You can understand why people lie, cheat, and steal for their own personal gain but to be just plain nasty for no good reason is despicable. The only thing I can come up with is that they are so incompetent they think they have to kick every one under them to hide their own failures. Maybe City Hall and the new NYCERS Chair will get tired of them like the previous mayor did with Martha Stark.

DOI and Mazza

The Department of Investigation (DOI) recently released a fraud report involving theft of NYCERS checks.

Below is an excerpt from the beginning of the report which was 23 pages long and dealt with the loss of nearly $384,000 from NYCERS. The report, while accurate about the fraudulant cashing of NYCERS benefit checks, is a lot to do about a relatively small issue. DOI rarelly reports a complete accounting of the actual convictions and prison sentences that result from its investigations.

I want, however, to point out specifically the mention of Commissioner Gill Hearn's thanks to Karen Mazza at the end of the excerpt. Of course, Gill Hearn doesn't mention that she has not completed the investigation that DOI had committed to pursue into perjury and corruption charges against Mazza and other NYCERS management staff. I am sure the financial impact of corrupt management at NYCERS is far greater than $384,000.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: DIANE STRUZZI
WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012
(212) 825-5931
DOI RELEASES PENSION FRAUD REPORT INVOLVING EIGHT SEPARATE CASES IN WHICH INDIVIDUALS ATTEMPTED TO DEFRAUD OR DEFRAUDED NYCERS OF MORE THAN $400,000
ROSE GILL HEARN, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation (“DOI”), released a report today detailing eight recent investigations into fraud upon the New York City Employees’ Retirement System (“NYCERS“), the country’s largest municipal pension system. The eight investigations included in this report are the most recent that DOI has conducted and illustrate a range of fraudulent schemes that include family members and beneficiaries of deceased pensioners taking NYCERS funds they were not entitled to receive and the theft of NYCERS checks by ndividuals who falsely claimed they had not received the funds. These eight investigations identified nearly $384,000 in NYCERS funds that individuals wrongfully obtained and an attempt to obtain approximately $17,200, which was thwarted by DOI and NYCERS. Five of the eight individuals have already been criminally charged and three of those individuals have pleaded guilty, with one individual receiving a 60-day jail sentence just last week. A copy of the report is attached to this release.
...
Commissioner Gill Hearn thanked NYCERS Executive Director Diane D’Alessandro, NYCERS Director of Security Craig Thornton, and NYCERS General Counsel Karen Mazza, and their staffs, for their assistance and cooperation in these investigations.

State Insurance Audit Checklist

Since July 29. 2013 the State Insurance Department (NYS DFS) has accessed my blog 29 times. So I thought I would provide them with a suggested reading list. Below is a starting list. If I see something else that looks interesting, I'll add to the list.

• Who got the $140M?
• Why was the Transit Operating Force death benefit changed?
• The former chair of the NYCERS Board of Trustees
• Why is NYCERS paying the Comptroller?
• The civil service qualifications for the current NYCERS executive director
• Unaccounted investment fees , background , and more
• Investment madness
• Lack of disclosure on private equity and real estate transactions
• Hedge funds
• Private equity managers
• Delays in processing loans
• Examples of SPD errors ( A , B )
• NYCERS perjury
• D.O.I. and the perjury charge
• Funny wrinkle to the perjury and corruption story
• The WC offset nightmare
• Denial of due process
• The assumed interest rate
• Finally 7%, sort of
• Delays in pension benefit revisions
• The Met-Life building
• Disaster recovery site at L.I.C.
• Allegra Capital and lack of accounting oversight
• Harassment of EMS disabled retirees, and more
• Outside legal services
• Background on past State Insurance Department reports

What Happened to the Perjury Investigation at NYCERS - Thompson & de Blasio

In 2009, four years ago, the Public Adovcate and the Comptroller, both NYCERS trsutees, requested D.O.I. to investigate a charge of perjury and official misconduct by senior management at NYCERS. As of today there has been no resolution of those charges. The trustees made this request in response to specific evidence that I had given to the trustees of the perjury by NYCERS senior staff.

In 2009, Bill Thompson was a NYCERS trustee and the Public Advocate's office made the actual request for the investigation. In 2010, de Blasio became the Public Advocate and a NYCERS trustee.

Thompson and de Blasio are now running for mayor of New York City. Shouldn't they clear up this unfinished business before they take on the responsibilities of mayor? Scott Stringer was also a NYCERS trustee in 2009 and has equal responsibility for cleaning up this mess.

Production Breakdowns

I just became aware that there is a a six plus month delay at NYCERS in processing members' claims to purchase service. This is not the only area where there are delays at NYCERS.

As of March, 2005 the NYCERS trustees regularly received a monthly production report telling them how many claims (for 20 different operational units) had been filed in the last month, how many had been processed in the same month, and a closing balance of outstanding claims unprocessed. These numbers were part of charts going back 15 months so that the trustees could see trends over a full annual cycle. The trustees were also given a summary chart indicating which operations were on target based on closing balances. For units not on target, the executive summary outlined corrective actions and estimated times to clear that balance. The estimates were based on actual levels of production.

Needless to say, since March, 2005 the monthly production charts have changed and no longer provide any numbers, only naked claims that production levels are on target. The new charts are a completed waste of paper.

It is hard to believe that the trustees would accept smoke and mirrors when they previously had extensive production figures. It is fair to say that the trustees don't care. Once upon a time, the union trustees were very focused on helping their members but no longer.

Just for Chuckles

Read this marketing garbage claiming wiz bang improvements at the NYCERS HR division. That's the unit run by Felita Baksh (aka Ramsami). You all know her well from her writing adventures with Karen Mazza, her credit card escapades with COIB, and her loose grip on the truth with DOI and the NYS Division of Human Rights. Of course, there is nothing to laugh about if you are one the NYCERS employees that she has tortured over the last eight years.

NYC Department of Investigation – Can You Trust DOI?

In the spring of 2009, two and half years ago, I reported to both the Department of Investigation (DOI) and the NYCERS trustees an act of perjury (deliberately giving a false statement under oath) by Felita Baksh (aka Ramsami) during a sworn DOI interview.

In response to my notice, one of the trustees, the former Public Advocate, asked that DOI investigate the matter and report back to the Public Advocate and to me. The Public Advocate was the only party to take any action or acknowledge my allegation. In response, DOI notified the Public Advocate that it was forwarding the matter to the Department of Finance IG for review. DOI did not notify me of this action but the Public Advocate did.

I provided all parties with a copy of the verbatim testimony of the DOI interview of Baksh from July, 2004. The interview was given under oath. In a very careful manner, the DOI interviewers gave Baksh a second chance to correct her original false testimony after warning her that she was under oath. She did not change her testimony. The false testimony related to the help Baksh received from Karen Mazza, a staff attorney at NYCERS, in regards to Baksh’s fraudulent appointment as HR director at NYCERS in 2004.

You might be wondering how DOI managed to miss this almost certain act of perjury during one of its own interviews. In 2004, DOI chose not to make a verbatim transcript from the audio tape of the interview. DOI chose, instead, to allow the lead investigator, Carol DeFreitas, to make a summary from the audio recording of the interview. DeFreitas was not one of the DOI investigators who interviewed Baksh. DOI had put her in charge of the investigation even though she was only a temporary employee recently on loan from Martha Stark. DeFreitas was actually a Department of Finance employee receiving a pay check from Finance and not DOI.

Subsequently, DeFreitas became involved with Mazza in an effort to hide the extent of the help that Mazza gave to Baksh. In addition, Mazza pulled another NYCERS employee, Kin Mak, into the cover up. Mak, an IT staffer, enabled Mazza to hide incriminating emails but not before Mak made copies of all the emails that pertained to the events surrounding the investigation.

Those copies are safely tucked away at Mak’s home in Pennsylvania. Those emails, I suspect, cast a wide net and have crippled the investigation into the Baksh perjury charge because of the people implicated by the emails.

I previously reported all of this in a series of postings: perjury, DOI, and sleeping trustees.

Recently, in response to a FOIL request for DOI’s closing memo for the investigation of the perjury charge, DOI refused to release any information. DOI claims that the information is exempt under FOIL because it would be an “unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and it was “compiled for law enforcement purposes and would identify a confidential source or reveal confidential information relating to a criminal investigation”.

It is clear that the perjury charge against Baksh is public record. There is no personal privacy to protect in this case. If DOI finds that this public charge is untrue, it should at least clear Baksh’s name. But I am very certain that DOI found the charge to be true. It appears that DOI does not want to deal with the charge and the web of corruption that goes along with it.

The majority of DOI’s work is allegedly for law enforcement purposes. DOI is claiming the closing memo would identify a confidential source. That can’t be it. I publicly supplied them with all the information they need to reach a conclusion on the charge. In addition, after two and half years, I don’t think that there is any criminal investigation going on. It is completely reasonable to conclude that DOI is protecting one or more people.

Unfortunately, DOI has not given a report on the investigation to the Public Advocate or to me.

Even more unfortunately, the current Public Advocate has made no effort to obtain the closing memo from DOI even after being questioned about the investigation.

In closing, the perjury allegation is almost certainly true and therefore, almost certainly the NYCERS trustees are allowing three criminals to continue to work at NYCERS. This raises suspicions about the judgement and integrity of the trustees.

Perjury at NYCERS - Suprise arrest at FDNY

On November 20, 2009, DOI issued a press release announcing the arrest of Jennifer Ramsammy. She is accused of falsifying her time records while working at the NY Fire Department. The false records resulted in $428 of fraudulent pay. The Kings County District Attorney has charged her with 19 felony counts.

Ms. Ramsammy has worked in the pension bureau at FDNY since 2007. Prior to 2007, she worked at NYCERS. She left NYCERS under a cloud relating to her time records. Ms. Ramsammy is the cousin of Felita Baksh (a.k.a. Ramsami), the HR director at NYCERS. Prior to 2004, Ms. Baksh worked at FDNY.

Currently Fenella Ramsami, Ms Baksh’s sister, works at the NYC Department of Finance. Prior to that she worked at the NY Fire Department and before that at NYCERS.

Prior to the mayor asking for her resignation, Martha Stark was the Commissioner of the Department of Finance and the Chair of the NYCERS Board of Trustees.

DOI is currently investigating a work related perjury charge against Ms. Baksh. DOI is also investigating Ms. Stark at the request of the mayor.

Maybe, all of these issues are connected.