FBI probes Bronx home of Mayor Adams aide Winnie Greco

NEW YORK — The FBI carried out “court-authorized law enforcement activity” on Thursday at the Bronx address of Mayor Adams’ aide Winnie Greco, a law enforcement source confirmed to the New York Daily News.

Greco, Adams’ director of Asian Affairs, is already the subject of a city Department of Investigation probe examining whether she attempted to milk perks out of her government job, but it was not immediately clear if the FBI’s raid Thursday is related to that investigation.

The law enforcement source who spoke to the Daily News declined to comment when asked if a search warrant had been executed at Greco’s address.

The raid at Gillespie Avenue, first reported by News12 The Bronx, involved blocking off a Bronx intersection and multiple government vehicles and agents, according to that outlet. Video posted by Fox News showed federal agents entering the Pelham Bay premises repeatedly.

Late last year, the news outlet The City first reported Greco was being probed by the city's Department of Investigation based on a referral from the mayor’s office, but a DOI spokesperson would not divulge what that investigation’s focus was at the time. A spokesperson for that agency also declined comment Thursday.

The DOI probe came on the heels of The City’s reporting that Greco asked a volunteer for Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign to renovate her Bronx home for free before getting a job in the Adams administration.

That outlet also reported that after that campaign volunteer was hired by the city, Greco continued to demand he perform work on her home while on the city’s time.

When asked about the fed’s activity at Greco’s address, Adams’ spokesman Fabien Levy said that “our administration will always follow the law.”

“We always expect all our employees to adhere to the strictest ethical guidelines. As we have repeatedly said, we don’t comment on matters that are under review, but will fully cooperate with any review underway,” Levy added. “The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing.”

Property records show Greco bought the one-family home in Pelham Bay for $850,000 this past Oct. 16. She holds a $680,000 mortgage on the property, records show.

Greco reportedly earns $100,000 annually in her city job.

In paperwork for the mortgage, Greco identified herself as residing at another one-family home just across the street from her other property. Property records show Greco owns the property with Nickolas Greco, her husband.

It’s unclear which of the two buildings Greco permanently resides in.

The feds’ interest in Greco comes as the mayor himself faces a federal probe into his ties to Turkey. As part of that investigation, the FBI raided the homes of Brianna Suggs, a top fundraiser for Adams, and City Hall staffer Rana Abbasova. The FBI also seized the mayor’s electronic devices as part of their investigation.

It’s unclear whether the raid in the Bronx is tied to that probe into foreign involvement in local politics.

Records show that Greco likely had her own connections to a foreign government.

It first emerged last year that Greco served as a consultant to multiple local Chinese interest groups that receive funding from Beijing’s Communist government. And in a previously unknown wrinkle, Greco also identified herself in a 2014 letter reviewed by the Daily News as the CEO of the New York Sino Agricultural Organization, a Chinese investment group.

Under Greco’s leadership, the Sino organization was in talks in the mid-2010s with the upstate municipality of Warwick about purchasing the shuttered Mid-Orange Correctional Facility in hopes of turning it into a “agricultural education center,” according to a lawsuit filed in Orange County Supreme Court in 2021.

In 2013, Warwick Town Supervisor Mike Sweeton told the Times Herald-Record that the Chinese government was actually behind the bid to buy the old prison. Citing Sweeton, the local newspaper reported at the time that China’s government was hoping to turn the closed prison into “an agricultural university or a vocational school, where they can learn about American agricultural technology.”

Sino’s bid to buy the old prison ultimately never came to fruition.

An Adams administration official confirmed that Greco has been placed on leave, but would not say whether or not she’s still drawing a salary while away from her post. The official noted that the mayor’s office hasn’t been contacted by either the FBI or federal prosecutors about the matter.

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