Mayor Eric Adams will face a make-or-break moment when the panel that doles out millions of dollars in public campaign matching funds decides whether his reelection bid merits more taxpayer money — despite mounting evidence of irregularities and allegations of fraud in both his 2021 and 2025 campaigns.
On Monday, the city Campaign Finance Board is scheduled to announce which candidates in next year’s election merit a first round of funding in the program, which provides $8 for every $1 donated by city residents up to the first $250.
With the primary just six months away, the board’s decision on whether to award Adams the $4.5 million in matching funds his campaign has requested so far could determine the mayor’s ability to get himself re-elected.
Adams’ past and current fundraising are under intense scrutiny by the board — and by federal prosecutors, who allege in a criminal indictment that Adams directly participated in efforts to illegally manipulate the matching funds program in both 2021 and 2025.
This time around, the board has preliminarily flagged one-third of his matching funds claims as likely invalid — including half of all of those in the most recent period, covering July through October, records released Tuesday show.
Official inquiries about the sources of Adams’ donations go back years. So does his campaign’s refusal to answer those questions forthrightly.
During his 2021 run for mayor, the Campaign Finance Board repeatedly asked the Adams campaign to address questions about hundreds of contributions. Adams ignored nearly all these requests.
His campaign then obtained repeated extensions on responding to a 900-page audit first issued back in May. At the time, the board raised numerous red flags, including more than 150 fundraising events where the campaign declined to document who paid or how much they spent — an indication of potentially illegal in-kind gifts.
CFB officials acknowledge they are looking at the indictment as they weigh Adams’ request for more matching funds. The board has the discretion to reject Adams’ 2025 request entirely — not just for the current campaign’s activities but also based on his track record in 2021, officials say.
During a City Council hearing last week, Councilmember Lincoln Restler (D-Brooklyn) asked CFB Executive Director Paul Ryan if the board considers a candidates’ behavior in past elections when weighing their eligibility for public funds.
Ryan conceded that in some cases, a donation’s eligibility for matching funds is “susceptible to being applied to fact patterns that exist across election cycles.”
Ryan also noted that the board had rejected ex-Comptroller John Liu’s request for $3 million in matching funds for his failed 2013 mayoral bid after two Liu campaign staffers were convicted of arranging “straw donations” to fraudulently unlock matching funds.
Fraud, Ryan noted, “is a basis of denial of public matching funds.”
Undocumented Events
The campaign is already well aware of a fact pattern that emerged in the draft audit of Adams’ 2021 campaign, which the agency released publicly in July. In it, the board staff red-flagged a variety of issues, ranging from missing donor addresses to missing documentation. They then directed the campaign to account for those irregularities.
After repeatedly requesting extensions, Adams filed his response Nov. 29. The board has yet to make it public, and Adams’ campaign lawyer, Vito Pitta, did not respond to THE CITY’s request for a copy of the audit response.
The CFB audit zeroed in on dozens of fundraising events — including many that featured food, drink and even DJs — for which the Adams’ campaign provided no documentation. The CFB demanded an explanation for who paid for these events and how much they cost.
Campaigns are subject to spending limits, and individuals are subject to contribution limits, so when the source and true cost of these events is not documented, CFB has no way to know if the campaign is in compliance.
Take, for instance, an Aug. 8, 2021 event the campaign listed as “barbecue fundraiser” hosted by Lian Wu Shao, owner of the Flushing, Queens-based New World Mall. The mall’s office was raided by law enforcement early this year in an ongoing investigation by the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney that also includes Adams’ now-former liaison Asian communities, Winnie Greco.
The campaign reported to the CFB that the event raised nearly $55,000 through 231 small donations of $249 or $250, the cap amount for matching funds. Under the city’s $8 match for every $1 of eligible donation raised, that would trigger $326,000 in public dollars.
During the 2021 campaign, CFB staff had flagged this fundraiser as an “undocumented in-kind contribution” and demanded Adams produce records spelling out who paid for it and how much it cost. (As with cash donations, in-kind contributions were limited to $2,000 and counted toward a donor’s total.) The board, once again, received no response from the campaign.
The Adams campaign told THE CITY that the event cost less than $500 and therefore did not have to be reported under CFB rules for in-kind donations. THE CITY subsequently discovered a video of the event, attended by Adams, that depicted a lavish affair at Shao’s Long Island mansion that included lobster and high-end bottles of wine.
In all, CFB auditors tallied 158 instances of fundraisers the Adams campaign reported that did not list any documentation of the costs involved or who paid for it. The majority of these events took place after Adams had secured the Democratic nomination for mayor in June 2021.
A Campaign Like No Other
Adams’ campaign conduct was distinctly different from his top rivals in the mayor’s race: Maya Wiley had two events flagged by the CFB as undocumented in-kind contributions, while Kathryn Garcia had zero. Adams bested Garcia by a mere 7,100 votes in the final round of ranked-choice voting.
Overall, CFB’s auditors raised far more questions about Adams’ fundraising than they did with Wiley or Garcia, a review of their CFB audits by THE CITY shows.
Take the issue of intermediaries. Individuals who bundle multiple donations and present them to the campaign to potentially increase their clout if the candidate is elected. Campaigns are supposed to report them to the board, but CFB auditors identified 57 suspected intermediaries Adams’ campaign did not report to them, effectively hiding potential influence-peddling.
In contrast, CFB found zero suspected intermediaries for Garcia and Wiley, both of whom made a practice of identifying these “bundlers” to the board.
And then there’s the issue of straw donations, in which the true source of the donation is masked by passing it through others — an activity highlighted throughout Adams’ indictment. CFB auditors found 15 instances they believed to be potential straw donations to Adams, particularly with multiple givers using the same credit card.
They found no indication of such activity with either the Garcia or Wiley campaigns.
Exit Strategy
The CFB’s concerns about Adams’ practices didn’t end with the 2021 campaign. As THE CITY reported in October, his re-election bid has already demonstrated a pattern of submitting questionable claims for matching funds, with the CFB deeming one out of every three dollars by mid-July to be “invalid.”
The board can deem a matching claim potentially invalid for a variety of reasons, from failing to list a donor’s addresses or employer to seeking matching funds from contributions that are ineligible for a match, such as donors who do business with the city.
A look at CFB’s so-called “statement reviews” — preliminary examinations of the campaign’s periodic filings — for Adams’ 2025 campaign shows the percentage of these claims CFB deemed invalid has grown from 28% in the first statement, filed in July 2022, to 42% by the fifth statement, which was filed last July.
Records released Tuesday show a preliminary CFB review found even greater evidence of flawed matching funds request in the batch of contributions made between mid-July and mid-October, with 50% of the $61,000 in contributions Adams is claiming for matching funds found invalid.
All told the CFB tagged as invalid 34% of the $564,000 in contributions Adams’ 2025 campaign has requested matching funds for.
Criminal Indictment
Then there’s the evidence cited in the indictment of Adams in the case brought by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, which details several allegations — including some where the mayor was personally involved — of soliciting and accepting illegal contributions via straw donors. Some of these interactions had raised concerns from the Campaign Finance Board during the campaign.
The indictment, for instance, highlights Businessman #5, identified by sources as Erden Arkan, owner of KSK Construction. Arkan arranged a May 2021 fundraising event that Adams attended in which KSK made payments of $1,250 to 10 employees, who then made donations of the same amount to Adams’ 2021 campaign, the indictment alleges.
During the 2021 campaign, the CFB tagged that fundraiser as suspicious, noting 10 donors all listed the same Williamsburg, Brooklyn home address. Though the board received no response from the campaign about its concerns, it nevertheless later approved matching funds for eight of the donations.
The indictment alleges this pattern of accepting illegal donations continued, charging that Adams “solicited and knowingly accepted straw and foreign contributions as part of his efforts to raise funds for the 2025 campaign.”
They highlight an elaborate ruse to mask the true source of contributions from Turkish sources via a September 2023 “conference” of “International Sustainability Leaders” held in a private room at a Manhattan hotel.
The event was listed as a private dinner and it was not disclosed on the mayor’s public calendar. It did, however, show up on his private calendar as “Fundraiser for Eric Adams 2025,” the indictment alleges.
Prosecutors say Adams attended and at one point was introduced to a Turkish national in attendance. The mayor thanked him for showing up.
Attendees, including foreign nationals, paid $5,000 each, and a Turkish promoter used a portion of these payments to make straw donations to Adams 2025 campaign, sending cash to an Adams staffer, the indictment alleges. The staffer then distributed $2,100 in cash to at least three donors, who in turn made on-line contributions of that amount to Adams 2025, the indictment alleges.
Prosecutors did not identify the donors, but it’s possible that the 2025 campaign submitted them as eligible for matching funds.
What Will Adams Do?
Such questionable donations could ultimately play a role in next week’s board decision on whether to award Adams more taxpayer dollars for his ongoing campaign — a watershed moment for him as he faces an April trial on the federal charges.
Hours after the indictment was unsealed, board chair Frederick Schaffer asserted that the board would examine its contents, calling the allegations “serious for New Yorkers and for those of us committed to accessible, transparent and accountable elections” and vowing to “uphold the city’s campaign finance laws and rules and safeguard taxpayer dollars.”
If the board rejects his request for matching funds, Adams could opt out of the program entirely, a move that would allow him to collect bigger individual donations capped at $3,700 — up from the $2,100 limit for candidates in the matching fund program.
On Tuesday Politico NY reported that Adams attended a fundraiser in Puerto Rico with an invitation to prospective donors, revealing he’s considering this possibility. The invitation listed the maximum donation as $3,700.
