City Comptroller Mark Levine launched an audit of $243 million in no-bid DHS shelter contracts awarded to BHRAGS Home Care — whose former leaders were federally charged in March — while former Comptroller Brad Lander had not opened one despite bribery accusations surfacing in December 2023.

City Comptroller Mark Levine on July 15 launched an audit of $243 million in no-bid Department of Homeless Services contracts awarded to BHRAGS Home Care — the Brooklyn nonprofit whose former president and executive director were federally charged in March with embezzling more than $1 million and shaking down subcontractors for bribes.

The audit covers all expired DHS shelter contracts BHRAGS held between October 2022 and February 2024, when the Adams administration suspended competitive bidding and issued emergency awards during the 2022 migrant surge. Levine's office said it will examine whether DHS reimbursements to BHRAGS "were reasonable and consistent with terms and conditions of the contracts" and will review DHS monitoring of ongoing contracts going forward.

Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York charged Ronald Tirelus, BHRAGS's former president, and Roberto Samedy, its former executive director, with the embezzlement and kickback scheme. Edouardo St. Fort, president of Fort NYS Security, faces charges for allegedly paying bribes to both to win a shelter security subcontract. Records show DHS paid BHRAGS $1.1 million for that security work; St. Fort's firm says it received only a fraction.

The oversight gap is the audit's backdrop. Bribery accusations involving BHRAGS first surfaced in December 2023. DHS put the group into a corrective action plan in the fall of 2024. But former Comptroller Brad Lander — who last month won the Democratic primary in New York's 10th congressional district, unseating Rep. Dan Goldman — did not open an audit during his tenure despite the accumulating red flags.

The Department of Social Services, which oversees DHS, pushed back through spokesperson Neha Sharma, saying the agency was "pivotal to the investigation" and had flagged BHRAGS to the Department of Investigation, which it credits with producing the federal indictment. DSS is also cutting BHRAGS's shelter footprint from nine sites under the Adams administration to four, three of them temporary hotel locations.

Levine's audit now has a mandate to answer what the prior comptroller left open: whether DHS had adequate tools to detect any of the at least $1.3 million in alleged theft before federal prosecutors did it for them.