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Eric Ulrich associate got towing job with NYC agency while under criminal indictment
NY Daily News·Barry Williams/New York Daily News/TNS
Chris Sommerfeldt, New York Daily News
Updated 5 min read
Weeks before he was indicted on bribery charges alongside ex-Buildings Department head Eric Ulrich this summer, a Queens tow truck operator got paid by a city agency for a vehicle hauling job — even though he had for years been barred from receiving municipal business due to a separate, ongoing legal battle, the Daily News has learned.
The Sanitation Department’s $9,000 payment to Michael Mazzio’s Mike’s Heavy Duty Towing firm came in two installments — $3,500 on June 28 and $5,500 on July 7, city records show. The disbursements were for a “non-standard” job the company performed that involved towing vehicles, including an excavator, for the Sanitation Department over a three-day span in May and June, agency spokesman Josh Goodman confirmed this week.
The award marked the first time a city agency had given Mike’s Heavy Duty a taxpayer-funded gig since 2018. That year, after nearly a decade of contracting with the firm for vehicle repair services, procurement records show the city stopped offering any more business to Mike’s Heavy Duty in the wake of then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance indicting Mazzio on criminal charges that he helped orchestrate a conspiracy to rig city contracts for vehicle towing on highways.
The 2018 case is still ongoing, and Mazzio has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Procurement rules from the Mayor’s Office of Contract Services state that an unresolved criminal indictment of a company executive is grounds for barring that company from being considered for any city business. Private companies, meantime, are under the same rules required to disclose details about their principals, such as investigations or indictments they’re facing, before they can receive a city contract.
But Goodman, the Sanitation spokesman, said Mike’s Heavy Duty never filed such a disclosure before this summer’s hauling job — and wasn’t required to — because the firm didn’t sign a formal contract with the agency.
Rather, records show Mike’s Heavy Duty was able to do business with the Sanitation Department because of a loophole. The award was made via a “purchase order” — a form of procurement that does not require a competitive bidding process or disclosures about executives as long as the total cost falls below $20,000.
Since there was no disclosure, Goodman said the department did not realize Mazzio was already under indictment at the time of the haul job.
If it did know, he said the department wouldn’t have given Mazzio’s firm the job and promised it won’t get any more work with the agency going forward. Goodman declined to spell out what type of due diligence the department does for purchase orders, or explain how it’s possible for a pending criminal indictment to not appear in any screening performed on Mike’s Heavy Duty.
It’s unclear if the city keeps companies it’s barred from doing business with in a database.
Asked why the department went with Mazzio’s firm in the first place, Goodman said the tow job required a so-called “beam trailer,” and that the agency’s own one was being repaired at the time.
As a result, Goodman said the agency hired Mike’s Heavy Duty because a Sanitation Department mechanic “who needed these vehicles moved knew that this company had [a beam trailer], and so made arrangements.”
Goodman declined to name the mechanic. He said the job was performed to satisfaction and provided The News with photos of the haul.
This summer’s tow job payment to Mike’s Heavy Duty came less than a month before Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg filed criminal charges in August alleging Mazzio and five other men gave Ulrich bribes in 2021 and 2022 in exchange for Ulrich using his government powers to do them favors, including helping them get business with the city.
A spokeswoman for Bragg declined to comment on Sanitation’s payment to Mike’s Heavy Duty.
Ulrich resigned as Mayor Adams’ Buildings commissioner in November 2022 after it first became known Bragg’s office was investigating him over bribery allegations. The ex-commissioner, who has pleaded not guilty, declined to comment Thursday on Mazzio’s recent Sanitation Department gig.
Mazzio, who was alleged by authorities to have reputed mob ties in 2018 and helped raise tens of thousands of dollars for Adams’ 2021 campaign with Ulrich, also declined to comment via his attorney, James Frocarro. Mazzio has pleaded not guilty to the bribery charges, too.
One of the five indictments Ulrich was arraigned on this month alleges he used his influence as a top Adams administration official to help Mazzio get his tow truck license with the Department of Consumer and Workers Protection restored after the agency initially refused to renew it in the wake of his 2018 indictment, threatening his firm’s ability to operate. In return, Mazzio showered Ulrich with bribes, including cash and Mets tickets, prosecutors say.
As first reported by the news outlet The City this week, Mazzio also convinced Adams’ administration to scrap a license renewal for one of his top competitors in the tow trucking industry.
Neither Adams nor any current members of his administration are accused of any wrongdoing as part of Ulrich’s indictments.
Adams and his chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, met on multiple occasions with Ulrich and his co-defendants, including Mazzio, according to court papers.
In a series of conversations shortly after Adams took office in January 2022, Mazzio and another co-defendant, Joseph Livreri, urged Lewis-Martin “to get authorization for Mike’s Heavy Duty Towing to tow from NYC’s highways during a snowstorm” and to convince her and “other high ranking NYC officials to remove a competing tow truck company from its arterial towing contract,” one of the indictments charge.
That competing firm is Runway Towing, who had its license renewal application denied by the Department of Consumer and Workers Protection around the same time Mazzio and Livreri discussed the matter with Lewis-Martin, according to The City’s report.
