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.

Word of Warning

This is a sober warning of pension fund indictments and the types of dangers that threaten public pension plans. The warning was written by Edward "Ted" Siedle, a former S.E.C. attorney and a contributor to Forbes.

I wonder what happened to the perjury investigation at NYCERS?

NYCERS Investment History: 2002 – 2009

In light of the recent negative investigative findings by DOI of the former NYCERS Chair of the Board of Trustees, it would be prudent for the trustees to review the investment decisions that occurred during her tenure from 2002 to 2009.

As background, DOI found that the Chair failed to implement corrective actions with respect to the city’s property valuation system. Such actions were agreed upon by all parties in response to a major 2002 bribery scandal in the property valuation system. The Chair subsequently lied about implementing these actions. During this seven year period NYCERS’s started making significant real estate investments, as outlined below.

In addition, there is an alleged claim of interference by the Chair in the property valuation of the Met-Life Building just prior to its 2005 sale for $1.74B to a limited partnership which included both NYCERS and NYCTRS. The NYCERS Chair was also the Chair at NYCTRS at the time. This allegation was reported to the Manhattan DA’s office in 2006 but no action was taken. The new DOI report should prod the DA to wake up.

Considering the huge increase in private equity investments during the same period along with the associated scandal at the NYSLERS pension fund in Albany, the trustees should expand their review to this asset class also.

To complete their due diligence the Trustees should review the unresolved perjury and conspiracy charges still pending against senior NYCERS management.

As of June 30, 2002 the assets of NYCERS were reported to be worth $32.2B with no real estate investments and $96M in private equity.

As of June 30, 2009 the assets of NYCERS were reported to be worth $30.9B with $885M in real estate investments and $1.9B in private equity.

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.

Perjury at NYCERS - Trustees sleeping

November 16, 2009 - This is an update on the DOI perjury investigation of the NYCERS HR director, Felita Baksh (aka Ramsami). Listed below are letters between the NYCERS trustees and myself with respect to this investigation.

It is clear from the letters, that the trustees are ignoring this issue. I thought the November 3, 2009 election would have provided the trustees with a date for action. They are, however, still allowing this woman to put the agency at risk.

This year Baksh again lied under oath. NYCERS is currently trying to terminate a long time employee because she allegedly incorrectly claimed to have completed three cases on a weekly production report. This employee had previously reported the agency to DOI. That did not make the current executive director happy.

At a disciplinary hearing at OATH for this employee, Baksh lied about a conversation she had with the employee. Since it was a two person conversation, she felt free to deny saying what the employee claimed she had said. The employee, however, had the good sense to record the conversation unbeknownst to Baksh. There is now evidence of two instances of perjury by Baksh.

NYCERS had the nerve to threaten the employee with disciplinary charges for recording the conversation. You can’t make this stuff up. Of course, the NYCERS legal director, Mazza, was involved with the OATH hearing, so anything is possible. This was months ago and there is still no decision from OATH. That is not a good sign.

For the record, this savvy employee also has an EEO action against the agency which is moving into a trial stage. In light of my recommendation to the trustees to put Baksh on paid leave while the investigation is going on and their refusal to do so, it is disturbing that NYCERS felt it necessary to put this employee on paid leave for the last nine months along with a 30 day suspension without pay. Remember perjury is a criminal charge.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        August 12, 2009

Greg Floyd, President – Teamsters Local 237
Trustee, NYCERS Board of Trustees
216 West 14th Street 
New York, NY 10011

        Pub. Adv. Case #: 140753

Dear Trustee:

 This is a follow up to a letter I sent to most of the trustees in March, 2009.
The original letter provided the trustees with evidence of perjury by the current NYCERS HR director, Felita Baksh.

 Only one of the trustees, the Public Advocate, took any action with respect
to this evidence. The Public Advocate forwarded the charge to the Department of
Investigation (DOI) for its review and notified me of her action. 

 As of today, I have received no notice of any subsequent action in this case.
As reference, I am enclosing a copy of a May 9, 2009 letter that I sent to DOI 
Concerning this matter. Please notify me of the status of this investigation.

 In the interim, the trustees should immediately place the HR director on
administrative leave, since this is a criminal matter and the investigators already have clear evidence of the crime (an audio tape of DOI sworn testimony)
in their possession.



        Sincerely yours,



        John J. Murphy



Cc:  Ms. Susan Edelman, NY Post

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     THE CITY OF NEW YORK 
    OFFICE OF THE COMPTROLLER 
     GENERAL COUNSEL 
    1 CENTRE STREET. ROOM  614 
    NEW YORK, N.Y. 10007-2341

         TELEPHONE: (212) 669-2048 
         FAX NUMBER: (212)815-8714

         WILLIAM C. THOMPSON, JR.
         OMPTROLLER

Lewis Finkelman
DEPUTY COMPTROLLER FOR LEGAL
AFFAIRS/GENERAL COUNSEL

         August 19, 2009 

John J. Murphy 

Dear Mr. Murphy: 

 I write in response to the letter that you mailed to the
Comptroller on August 14ft and that was forwarded to me yesterday,
regarding your allegations of perjury by Felita Baksh, a current
employee of NYCERS. Your initial letter to the Comptroller in March
2009 regarding this matter was also referred to me and, at or about
that time, I promptly contacted the Department of Investigation ("DOI")
and forwarded your letter to that agency for its handling. Your most
recent correspondence makes clear that you have referred this matter to
DOI as well. Accordingly, you should follow up directly with DOI as to
the status of its investigation of this matter.

        Very truly yours, 


        Lewis Finkelman 

LF/lm 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

        August 23, 2009

Mr. Lewis Finkelman
Office of General Counsel
Office of the Comptroller
1 Centre Street, Rm. 614 
New York, NY 10007

        Pub. Adv. Case #: 140753


Dear Mr. Finkelman:

 Thank you for your August 19, 2009 letter in which you acknowledge my March
20, 2009 letter to the Comptroller and notifying me that you had referred the reported perjury charge to DOI.

 The Public Advocate had already promptly notified me in an April 29, 2009
letter that she had referred this work related perjury charge against the NYCERS HR director to DOI. The Public Advocate also sent me a copy of her
April 14, 2009 letter to Rose Gill Hearn.

 The purpose of my August 12, 2009 letter to the NYCERS trustees was to find
out the status of that investigation. 

 It would appear from your August 19, 2009 letter that you also do not know the
status of that investigation.

 DOI has never given me any acknowledgement of this matter in spite of my
Direct correspondence to Rose Gill Hearn or Richard Sullivan.

 The Comptroller, as a NYCERS trustee, is employing this person as the 
NYCERS HR director. This is while she is under investigation for perjury with 
respect to her official duties at NYCERS. DOI has the audio tape on which she
intentionally lied under oath while being interviewed by DOI in 2004.

 As a NYCERS fiduciary, the Comptroller should be protecting the fund from
this employee. He has hard evidence that this employee committed perjury. 

 I strongly recommended that the trustees place this employee on administrative
leave until the investigation is completed. I also request that you notify me
 whether you adopt this recommendation and, if you don’t,  why not.

 DOI can not provide the trustees with protection from misdeeds by this
employee while she is under investigation. The fact that DOI is possibly complicit in the perjury charge makes this action more imperative. 

 In 1986, the trustees dealt with perjury in a rapid and ruthless manner. Why
Such a casual attitude now?
 

        Sincerely yours,



        John J. Murphy



Cc:  Mr. Michael Barbaro, NY Times
 

The Email Superman

For all you IT pros, this should be a funny story.

Quoted below is an excerpt from an affidavit submitted by Kin Mak on June 19, 2007.

Mazza was under investigation by DOI (DeFreitas) for improperly influencing the hiring of Baksh as NYCERS HR director with respect to both Baksh’s resume and possibly Baksh’s second writing sample. Mazza had told DeFreitas that she had previously deleted all her relevant emails to Baksh. DeFreitas had asked Mak to search for Mazza’s deleted emails. For some reason DeFreitas allowed Mazza to participate in the alleged search for the deleted emails.

Here is the quote:

3. My search for the e-mails requested by Ms. DeFreitas was structured as follows.
First, the time period for the search was January 2004 through July 27, 2004, the date of the DeFreitas request.
Second, I searched for two types of e-mails:
(1) e-mails in Ms. Mazza’s e-mail box in which Ms Mazza was either the sender or the recipient and “resume” was the subject of the e-mail: and
(2) e-mails in Ms. Mazza’s e-mail box in which Felita Baksh, was either the sender or recipient at the e-mail address of bakshf@fdny.nyc.gov., and which either had “resume” in the subject field or the substance of the email concerned Ms. Baksh’s resume.
I conducted the search for the above e-mails by:
a) searching Ms. Mazza’s then-current e-mail box, i.e., the e-mail box as it existed on July 27, 2004; and
b) searching the weekly backup tapes starting from July 27, 2004, and going back to January 2004.

4. As result of the above search, I was able to recover one e-mail, dated January 28, 2004, in which the original sender was Felita Baksh at bakshf@fdny.nyc.gov, the subject was “Resume” and which had been sent by Ms. Baksh to Niki Browne NYCERS, who forwarded it to Ms. Mazza. On July 27, 2004, I forwarded the recovered e-mail to Ms. DeFreitas. A copy of an e-mail from me to Ms. DeFreitas, dated July 27, 2004, containing the recovered e-mail, is annexed hereto as Exhibit “B”.

This alleged search occurred sometime between 7:17 AM and 10:22 AM on July 27, 2004. As per instructions from DeFreitas and Mak’s comment in his 7:17 AM email, Mak spoke to Ms. Mazza before going ahead with the email search. For all of you who know Mazza’s morning arrival record at NYCERS, you will conclude that Mak did not start his search promptly at 7:17 AM. By 10:22 AM on the 27th, Mak emailed DeFreitas the results of his search, the one email mentioned above.

To anyone who is not familiar with the logistics of Microsoft’s Outlook, Mak’s description of this alleged search appears to be unremarkable. It is, however, the equivalent of someone describing a one mile run that took only 5 seconds. This was a patently false affidavit. The Law Department was made aware of the obvious lies in the affidavit but chose to bury the inconvenient truth. It’s not cheating, if you don’t get caught.

While it was very easy to search the current email box, the alleged searching of the 27 backup tapes would have been an enormously time consuming project. The tapes are not directly accessible and have to be downloaded to perform the search that Mak described. It usually takes over an hour for NYCERS to perform the daily backup of its Outlook system. The backup process is relatively simple compared to the restore process. I will spare you the complexities of restoring Outlook especially when there is already an active production Outlook system running. It is almost metaphysically certain that Mak did not search any of the backup tapes. Of course, there is no paper documentation of this search on the morning of July 27, 2004.

The affidavit was notarized by, guess who, Karen Mazza.

Subsequent to this affidavit Mak had to clarify that the famous one email was actually found in Niki Browne’s current email box and not in any of Mazza’s email boxes. At least that was what Mak said. Why was he looking Ms. Browne's email file?

Department of Investigation and Perjury at NYCERS

In a June 5, 2009 posting, I described an act of perjury committed by the current HR director at NYCERS, Felita Baksh, aka Ramsami. The following is a further description of the involvement of three other people with that perjury, one of which was functioning as an investigator for the Department of Investigation (DOI).

DOI is as subject to corruption as any other human organization. In addition, there is no oversight agency with authority to monitor DOI. The Commissioner of DOI serves at the pleasure of the mayor. The mayor can replace her without cause at a moment's notice. It is hard to imagine DOI producing an investigative report that would embarrass the mayor.

In December, 2003 Martha Stark assigned Carol DeFreitas, a Finance Department employee, to work on loan as an investigator with Vincent Green at DOI. For several years, DeFreitas remained on the Finance payroll while continuing to work at DOI. She is now on the DOI payroll with an annual salary of $83,000. DeFreitas is the investigator who suppressed the evidence of Baksh’s perjury.

The following is a July, 2004 time line covering the three people involved with Baksh’s perjury and other possible criminal acts.

1. On July 13, 2004 DeFreitas interviewed Karen Mazza. Under oath, Mazza admitted to editing Baksh's resume. She further admitted to using email to send the resume to Baksh.
2. On July 16, 2004, DeFreitas sent an email to NYCERS LAN administrator, Kin Mak, asking whether he could recover deleted emails from approximately 2 months ago.
3. On July 23, 2004 DeFreitas makes note of phone conversation with Mazza in which Mazza claims to have deleted emails to Baksh about 2 & 1/2 months ago. DeFreitas tells Mazza that the LAN group may be able to retrieve the email and that she will ask them to do that.
4. In a July 26, 2004 (5:05PM) email DeFreitas requests that Kin Mak give her copies of Mazza’s deleted emails as follows:

   Hello again Kin: I hope you enjoyed your vacation. I'm hoping you could retrieve e-mail(s) deleted by Karen Mazza about 2 and a half months ago. The subject of the email(s) was “resume” and the original sender was Felita Baksh. There may actually be several of these mails on the same topic going back and forth. I've spoken to Karen about this; so if you need additional information to help you in your search, please feel free to contact Karen and please keep this confidential. thank you. Carol.

5. The following morning, July 27, 2004(7:17AM) Mak emailed DeFreitas as follows:

   Thanks. Mondays are usually my scheduled day off (4 days work week). I will call you this morning to verbally confirm going ahead with the email retrieval. Also I will speak to Karen regarding this matter. Regards,

6. Three hours later (10:22 AM) Mak sent the following email to DeFreitas:

   Hi Carol: I am forwarding you the email I was able to recover. Please let me know if you need further assistance. Regards,

7. On July 29, 2004 (10:25AM) Mazza sent the following email to DeFreitas:

   "...Also can you please ask Kin Mak to let you know if anyone in house asks to see my deleted emails? I am somewhat uncomfortable with this info being recoverable. I'm sure you can understand why."

DeFreitas’ behavior during this time is very suspicious. She was looking to retrieve evidence that could be very damaging to a target of an investigation. She then allowed the target to control the search for the evidence. She also suspected that there were several emails. This might indicate other assistance that Mazza may have given Baksh. There were allegations about Baksh’s final writing test. The test was the basis on which she was hired. Of course, the actual emails would have clarified the situation.

When Mak retrieved only one email, DeFreitas made no attempt to check into the email system at the Fire Department where Baksh worked before returning to NYCERS. In fact Baksh’s Fire Department email address was on the one email that Mak allegedly retrieved. DeFreitas took no action in response to the admission by Mazza that Mazza did not want any NYCERS staff seeing her deleted emails. Mazza clearly knew that they are recoverable from the backup tapes. DeFreitas obviously knew this too. The existence of the deleted emails is further confirmed below.

In an affidavit, notarized by Mazza on June 19, 2007, Mak gives the details of this email search on the morning of July 27, 2004. The relevant testimony is as follows:

3. My search for the emails requested by Ms. DeFreitas was structured as follows. First, the period for the search was January 2004 through July 27, 2004, the date of Ms DeFreitas' request. Second, I searched for two types of emails: (1) e-mails in Ms. Mazza's e-mail box in which Ms. Mazza was either the sender or the recipient and "resume" was the subject of the e-mail; and (2) e-mails in Ms Mazza's e-mail box in which Felita Baksh, was either the sender or recipient at the e-mail address of bakshf@fdny.nyc.gov, and which either had “resume” in the subject field or the substance of the e-mail concerned Ms. Baksh's resume. I conducted the search for the above e-mails by: (a) searching Ms. Mazza's then current e-mail box, i.e., the email box as it existed on July 27, 2004; and (b) searching the weekly backup tapes starting from July 27, 2004, and going backward to January 2004. 4. As a result of the above search, I was able to recover one e-mail, dated January 28, 2004, in which the original sender was Felita Baksh at bakshf@fdny.nyc.gov, the subject of which was "Resume" and which had been sent by Ms. Baksh to Niki Browne NYCERS, who forwarded it to Ms. Mazza. On July 27, 2004, I forwarded the recovered e-mail to Ms. DeFreitas.

It is clear that Mak would have you believe that he was able to find only one of Mazza's allegedly deleted emails. However, shortly after this affidavit Mak was forced to admit that he did not find this email in Mazza's email box on line or on the backup tapes. He had to admit that he actually found it in the active email box of Niki Browne who had forwarded it to Mazza and who had no reason to delete it.

While this means that Mak made a false statement in his affidavit, the truly bizarre fact about Mak's description of his e-mail search is that it is a total fabrication and a physical impossibility.

Each backup tape would have taken at least two hours to search, assuming no problems, and he claims to have searched 27 backup tapes. It is clearly impossible to have searched 27 backup tapes in three hours. It would have taken him at least 54 straight hours to perform the search. Just putting your hands on 27 tapes in three hours would have been a miracle, never mind down loading them and searching them for specific info. Mak never provided any documentation verifying the search.

During a subsequent deposition, Kin Mak, under advice of counsel, refused to answer any questions about the search. The deposition was ordered because Mak told Niki Browne that he had found many incriminating e-mails and that Mazza, DeFreitas, and Baksh were all dirty. This occurred on October 12, 2006 at NYCERS and in the phone calls later that evening and during the next three days. During the deposition, Mak attempted to deny having had these phone conversations but when presented with phone records, he changed his testimony.

What do we have now? For the last five years the city has been paying four city officials who are most likely guilty of criminal acts involving their official duties. DOI is facing the serious possibility of a corrupt investigator who suppressed evidence of perjury and conspired with a target to hide evidence during an investigation. NYCERS has three corrupt employees, a HR director who is perjurer, a legal director who hides evidence and lures another employee into making false statements, and a senior IT manager who allowed himself to be drawn into a conspiracy and then forced to commit perjury.

It is actually perverse that Mazza and Baksh are responsible for the termination of dozens of NYCERS employees. One of those employees is actually being terminated for wearing jeans for one day to work after an office fire.

Perjury at NYCERS

Listed at the end of this posting is part of an interview of a NYCERS employee, Felita Baksh, conducted by a NYC Dept. of Investigations (DOI) investigator, Daniel Lau, on July 13, 2004. Following the text of the interview is a excerpt from a letter written by Vincent Green, a DOI IG for Finance, on March 1, 2005. Finally, there is listed a part of DOI interview conducted, also on July 13, 2004, with another NYCERS employee, Karen Mazza, who contradicts Baksh's testimony.

Based on the DOI excerpt it is quite clear that Baksh lied under oath when being questioned by DOI. At the time Baksh was the HR director at NYCERS and still is. Mr. Lau, however, was not the chief investigator assigned to the investigation. That person was Carol DeFreitas.

Strangely, Ms. DeFreitas was an employee of the Department of Finance and not DOI. In late December, 2003 she was loaned to DOI through an agreement between Martha Stark, the Finance Commissioner, and Vincent Green, the IG for Finance.

The NYCERS Board of Trustees had originally requested the investigation which was the reason for the interviews. Subsequently, at the close of the investigation Vincent Green, in the March 1, 2005 letter, failed to report the perjury by Baksh to the NYCERS Board of Trustees. The letter was addressed to Martha Stark who was also the chair of the NYCERS Board. In addition, Green misstates what Mazza had actually admitted in her testimony. He also never mentions the fact that Mazza attempted to destroy emails between her and Baksh involving the resume or the fact that DeFreitas allowed Mazza to hide the emails with help from the LAN administrator at NYCERS.

In light of the circumstances surrounding Stark's recent forced resignation, this reporting failure by Green raises many questions. There is also the fact that in September, 2005, as part of litigation against NYCERS an attorney at the NYC Law Department was notified of allegations of Stark's involvment with an senior employee at Finance and other more serious charges involving pension investments. That attorney was Paul Marks.

Unfortunately, Baksh is still the HR director at NYCERS. She has since changed her name to Ramsami. Since 2005, Baksh has terminated dozens of NYCERS employees for trivial infractions. In addition, COIB has since found Baksh, a.k.a. Ramsami, in violation of NYC Charter regulations, in particular using a subordinate's credit card.

Inconceivably, Baksh subsequently fired the subordinate with an assist from Mazza. It may have something to do with the fact that the subordinate knew that Mazza had administered the final writing test to Baksh in 2004, which was the basis of her hiring as HR director.

Early this year I notified the NYCERS trustees and the DOI Commissioner of Baksh's perjury. Only one trustee, the Public Advocate, responded by forwarding the complaint to DOI. DOI responded to the the Public Advocate who then again notified me. I wonder how long it will take DOI to produce a professional response and how long the trustees will allow Baksh to stay as HR director?

From July 13, 2004 Baksh interview with DOI:

Lau: On that note, I’m only going to re-ask you one question and you’ve answered this before but I just want to make sure. I want to affirm that you are still under oath. That when you applied for the position nobody helped you with your resume, you said.

Baksh: No, no one changed anything on my resume. The only change that I remembered that they said and I remembered it because the e-mail said there’s only one thing that I’m missing. I’m sorry that we have to change this is on the cover letter.

Lau: And that was who?

Baksh:I’m a stickler or something like that.

Lau:That was Karen?

Baksh: Yes. I’m sorry. (phone rings)

Lau: Sure.

Baksh: That’s gotta be my children ……… - Sorry.

Lau: No problem. So you were saying. So Karen didn’t - just the cover letter.

Baksh: Yeah only the cover. She only did one – right.

Lau: One minor correction.

Tavarez: But Niki made the cover letter?

Baksh: Huh?

Lau: Well Niki also reviewed the cover?

Tavarez: Niki was the one who reviewed your cover letter

Baksh: They both but Niki – but Karen is the one that’s probably – I think Karen was the one who said it’s just that one word in the cover.

Tavarez: That was it. That was it.

Baksh: Niki didn’t have any changes to my resume. None at all. And I remember saying, you didn’t see anything you would change – any wor and she was like – no. But I think she was too busy. You know she just she was just getting into her position too.

From March 1, 2005 DOI report:

In addition, Karen Mazza, the NYCERS General Counsel, acknowledged to this office that she helped Baksh with her resume by suggesting she move things around. "

From July 13, 2004 Mazza interview with DOI:

Ancrum: Karen, the letter writer indicated that you had helped Felita in her application process. Specifically with her resume.

Mazza: The answer to that is yes. I help a lot of people with their resume. I have a reputation within our agency and among people who know me as being a real stickler for resumes. I’ve done a lot of interviewing over the course of my career – not myself – interviewing people and hiring – um – so people know I will look for and I will find, you know, the comma that’s in the wrong place, or the, you know, when you switch from plural to singular in the paragraph. So a lot of people come to me and ask me to look at their resumes and I never say no, and she came to me and asked me if I would look at her resume and I said yes.

DeFreitas: Did you look at anybody else’s resume that applied for the position?

Mazza: Nobody else – I didn’t know anybody else who applied – I said – I take that back. I do know Aurora Perez – I know her because our kids went to Pre-K together – our kids are not in 5th grade – but I don’t know her – but she would never call me and ask me to look at her resume.

DeFreitas: Did you make changes, Karen, to her resume?

Mazza: I suggested, you know, I may have suggested like, you know, switching words around or paragraphs around – like that – I don’t know if she made the changes because I didn’t…

DeFreitas: Because it was a suggestion, but you brought her into your office, you told her look – you need to change this around – do this – do that – it wasn’t something that you yourself physically took her resume and made revisions to it and made revisions to it yourself.

Mazza: She e-mailed it to me.

DeFreitas: OK

Mazza:And what I did was, you know, tracking on – how you do tracking on Word – with tracking I said I would move this here – I would do this, I would do that…

DeFreitas:OK

Mazza:So – that’s – so I didn’t meet with her to do it.

DeFreitas: Uhmmm

Mazza: We did it by…

DeFreitas: E-mail.

Mazza: Yeah.