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Get a link in your mailbox to your weekly NYPD Confidential column as soon as it is published! Click on the button above right on this page — or here — to sign up for this feature. Cashing Out on RechnitzDecember 2, 2019 Remember Jona Rechnitz? He is the liar/rat/skunk (take your pick) who served as the feds’ star witness — a one-man bribery machine who corrupted, among others, the NYPD’s top brass, Mayor Bill de Blasio, and former Correction Union head Norman Seabrook, whom Rechnitz persuaded to invest $19 million of the union’s pension fund in a high-risk hedge fund that went bust. Rechnitz, who has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy charges, is to be sentenced this week. Not only is he facing serious prison time but District Judge Alvin Hellerstein is seeking what Rechnitz treasures most — his money.
“Rechnitz had to know that Platinum Partners was a high-risk fund with assets substantially invested in illiquid securities, and that Murray Huberfeld was willing to pay a bribe to obtain funds to satisfy a liquidity shortage, thus making it reasonably foreseeable that an investment of pension funds risked the loss of those funds.,” Hellerstein wrote. “Rechnitz’s behavior causes him to be jointly and severally liable … for [the union’s] loss of $19 million.” To that end, Hellerstein is demanding that Rechnitz provide: |
Under the heading “Acceptance of Responsibility,” Hellerstein wrote that “the absence of any offer by Rechnitz to reimburse [the union] for its loss qualifies his acceptance of responsibility.” So how did Rechnitz do it? How did he con so many people — Seabrook in particular — into investing his union’s funds with Huberman? He testified he “waited for the right time” to suggest the investment, which included a kickback to Seabrook of $60,000.
“I felt it was my opening,” Rechnitz testified. |
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