A former top FDNY fire safety chief is planning to plead guilty in a deal with federal prosecutors who charged him and a colleague with taking secret kickbacks to expedite safety inspections for paying customers.
Prosecutors in Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams office on Monday filed a letter with the court revealing that Brian Cordasco has been “engaged in plea negotiations,” was offered a deal and informed the office he “intends to accept that plea offer.”
Two weeks ago Williams charged Cordasco and Anthony Saccavino, another high-ranking official in the Bureau of Fire Prevention, with running a years-long scheme to obtain payments through shell companies they set up to speed up inspections of fire suppression systems. (Saccavino has pleaded not guilty and is continuing to fight the charges.)
The duo worked with a former FDNY inspector acting as a hired expediter who funneled nearly $200,000 in off-the-books payments to them after they intervened with lower-level subordinates to accelerate inspections at a time when a backlog of requests had built up.
Their scheme came at the same time the Adams istration had begun moving big money real estate developers and corporations to the top of what the FDNY called the DMO list, named after the deputy mayor for operations — for inspections, bying lower-run applicants such as public schools, hospitals and homeless shelters.
At one point Cordasco made a point of criticizing the DMO list as “unfair” to applicants who’d been waiting months for inspectors to show up and sign off on their fire safety system. In one case, mega-developer SL Green got the FDNY to expedite inspection of a high-end sushi restaurant they were trying to open in their signature Midtown high rise tower, One Vanderbilt. SL Green’s CEO Mark Holliday had raised more than $30,000 for Adams during his 2021 campaign.
In announcing the indictment of Cordasco and Saccavino, Williams stated the duo “used the City Hall list or the DMO list to effectively excuse or cover up the way in which they were pressuring other folks to expedite the matters that they were being bribed to expedite.”
The letter specified that Cordasco planned to plead guilty to count one of the indictment, conspiracy to solicit and receive a bribe, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors would dismiss the other four charges against him, all of which carry steeper penalties ranging from 10 to 20 years.
Cordasco’s attorney, David Stern, did not immediately respond to THE CITY’s request for comment. A spokesperson for Williams declined to comment and the letter did not say whether Cordasco planned to cooperate with what Williams said was an ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors requested a hearing date for next week to enter the plea before Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Liman.
