De Blasio Crony Arrested On Fraud Charges

And so it begins:

The powerful leader of the union that represents New York City correction officers, whose alliances with mayors and governors have afforded him broad influence, was arrested on federal fraud charges on Wednesday, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The charges against the union leader, Norman Seabrook, and a second defendant, Murray Huberfeld, a hedge-fund financier, stem from the first major criminal case linked to one of several corruption investigations focused on the campaign fund-raising of Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat.

The relationship between the mayor and Mr. Seabrook has been close in the past. At a 2014 fund-raiser for a union charity; Mr. de Blasio referred to Mr. Seabrook as a “friend” and a “great leader.”

Mr. Seabrook, the longtime president of the 9,000-member Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, was taken into custody at his Bronx home around 6 a.m. by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the people with knowledge of the matter said. Mr. Huberfeld, the founder or Centurion Credit Management, which was later subsumed by the top-performing Platinum Partners, was taken into custody at his home at about the same time.

The charges, brought by prosecutors in the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, involve Mr. Seabrook’s investment of roughly $10 million from his union’s pension fund in Platinum Partners through Mr. Huberfeld, and Mr. Huberfeld’s payment of a kickback to the union leader, the people said.

Mr. Bharara and Diego Rodriguez, the assistant F.B.I. director who heads the bureau’s New York office, were expected to announce the charges at a news conference early Wednesday afternoon.

This fraud charge is not specifically linked to de Blasio, but Seabrook, as the Times article points out, is very close to de Blasio.

This is probably the first of the arrests you can expect Preet to make around the city corruption cases.

There'll be more and while I wouldn't bet the mortgage that de Blasio will be one of those arrests, I wouldn't bet the mortgage that he won't be either.