Housing Boss Who Was Accused of S***** Abuse Now Faces Bribery Charges

Prosecutors accused Victor Rivera of enriching himself through kickbacks as he led one of the largest homeless shelter operations in New York City.

Victor Rivera was fired as chief executive of Bronx Parent Housing Network after several women accused him of s***** assault and harassment.
Victor Rivera was fired as chief executive of Bronx Parent Housing Network after several women accused him of s***** assault and harassment. Credit…Jason Cohen/Bronx Times/Schneps Media, via Associated Press

By Amy Julia Harris
March 24, 2021Updated 6:38 p.m. ET

The former head of one of the largest homeless shelter networks in New York was arrested Wednesday on federal charges that he pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from contractors working with his organization.

The arrest of the executive, Victor Rivera, the former president and founder of the Bronx Parent Housing Network, came less than two months after a New York Times investigation found that he had engaged in a long pattern of s***** abuse and financial impropriety that stretched back almost a decade. Mr. Rivera was fired by the nonprofit last month, following The Times report.

The organization is one of dozens of nonprofit groups that operate the city’s $2 billion system to shelter the homeless, whose numbers have reached record levels.

Prosecutors on Wednesday said that Mr. Rivera had enriched himself for years by accepting bribes from companies doing work for his organization, according to papers filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Rivera, 61, laundered some of the money through entities he controlled, including a consulting company owned by one of his relatives, and used it to pay down his mortgage, according to prosecutors.

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At the same time, Mr. Rivera faces another criminal inquiry that began in response to The Times’s report: The Bronx district attorney’s office opened an investigation after 10 women, including homeless women staying in Mr. Rivera’s shelters, accused him of s***** assault or harassment. Two women said he had coerced them into performing oral s**. “Nobody tells daddy no,” Mr. Rivera told one of those women, an employee, according to an account she gave to the police.

The Times found that the Bronx Parent Housing Network paid two employees who had complained about Mr. Rivera’s s***** behavior a total of $175,000 in settlements that prohibited them from speaking publicly about their allegations.

Mr. Rivera helped start the Bronx Parent Housing Network in 2000 and steered it as it grew to become a major city contractor. Since 2017, his organization has received $274 million in city funding to run almost 70 sites of homeless housing. As the coronavirus swept through the homeless population, the city gave his group another $10 million to provide rooms where infected people could isolate and recover.

As the funding came in, Mr. Rivera’s personal fortune also grew. He drove a Mercedes-Benz leased by his organization and bought a home with a heated swimming pool north of New York City and another house in the Poconos.

The Times investigation found Mr. Rivera had used the nonprofit for his personal financial gain. He mingled the nonprofit’s finances with for-profit housing companies he owned, steered lucrative contracts to friends and provided jobs to several members of his family, the investigation found.

“Victor Rivera sought to leverage his position as the C.E.O. of a nonprofit into a very much for-profit situation for himself,” the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Audrey Strauss, said in a statement. Federal prosecutors conducted the investigation jointly with the city Department of Investigation.

At an initial court appearance on Wednesday, Mr. Rivera pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy, honest services wire fraud and money laundering and was released on bond. The prosecutor, David Abramowicz, said that Mr. Rivera’s lawyer said his client wanted to try to cooperate with the government “in its investigation and prosecution of others.” He offered no additional details about an ongoing inquiry or what information Mr. Rivera could provide.

Mr. Rivera’s lawyer, Harlan J. Protass, declined to comment. A spokesman for the Bronx Parent Housing Network did not respond to a request for comment.

As homelessness has soared in New York City in recent years, the city has entered into contracts with dozens of nonprofit organizations that run shelters and provide services. But officials have struggled to eliminate conflicts of interest and self-dealing in many of those groups. Ten of the city’s 70 nonprofit operators have been flagged for serious management or financial improprieties, but all of them continue to receive funding.

City investigators have examined one of the city’s largest providers, Acacia Network, which was found to have steered millions of dollars to a security company tied to top nonprofit officials. The city sued another shelter provider, Childrens Community Services, last year after accusing executives of fraud, bid-rigging and other financial misdeeds. Federal prosecutors and city investigators have investigated that organization.

After The Times disclosed allegations about Mr. Rivera’s behavior, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in early February that the city would hire an outside auditing firm to conduct a sweeping review of the nonprofit organizations providing services for the homeless.

A spokesman for Mr. de Blasio said Wednesday that the city is in the process of hiring an outside group to examine the shelter providers, but did not provide further details about the status of the audit.

In court papers, federal prosecutors offered some detail about how Mr. Rivera employed the nonprofit to benefit himself through bribery.

One entity that subleased property to the Bronx Parent Housing Network wrote checks for “consulting fees” to a company owned by one of Rivera’s relatives, prosecutors said. The fees were in fact kickback payments that Mr. Rivera then used to pay down the mortgage on his home, court papers said.

Mr. Rivera was accused of nepotism and conflicts of interest in 2017 by a whistle-blower who gave information to the city Department of Social Services, which oversees homeless shelters, and the city placed his organization on a special watch list.

Still, Mr. Rivera continued to find ways to benefit himself and his associates, The Times found.

Last year, for instance, the Bronx Parent Housing Network awarded $184,000 in maintenance contracts to a friend of Mr. Rivera who also had performed work at one of Mr. Rivera’s personal buildings in the Bronx, according to city contracting records and an insurance certificate. Mr. Rivera’s organization also steered millions of dollars in rent payments to a company called Urban Residences Corp, which is owned by his onetime business partner.

William K. Rashbaum and Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
The New York Times
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