A longtime pal of ex-Mayor Eric Adams who ran one of many nightlife mayor’s favourite haunts was indicted Wednesday in an alleged scheme to submit tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} of bogus no-fault automotive insurance coverage claims.
Zhan “Johnny” Petrosyants, 44, was taken into custody late Tuesday and was set to be offered in courtroom Wednesday. He and his twin brother, Robert, ran Osteria la Baia, a Manhattan hotspot the place the previous mayor spent many an evening.
Manhattan U.S. Lawyer Jay Clayton alleged Petrosyants was concerned in a fraud ring that submitted hundreds of thousands of fraudulent auto insurance coverage claims between 2018 and 2023, creating no-fault medical clinics that had been managed by non-licensed people and submitting payments for companies that had been by no means rendered or had been medically pointless.
Clinics that deal with no-fault claims typically depend on funding firms that present money advances primarily based on pending litigation. The businesses then pocket the total worth of the claims after they ultimately settle. Prosecutors say Petrosyants funneled 1000’s of bogus claims via a funding firm with the assistance of an unnamed co-conspirator.
In a pending civil lawsuit, the insurance coverage big Geico has alleged a funding firm arrange by lawyer Frank Carone, Adams’ former chief of employees and a serious metropolis lobbyist, had “knowingly aided and abetted” a longrunning scheme to submit bogus claims that Petrosyants was concerned in.
Late Wednesday, Carone — who has not been charged with wrongdoing — declined to touch upon Petrosyants’ indictment. THE CITY was unable to find out who’s representing Petrosyants as of late Wednesday.
This was Petrosyants’ second go-round with federal prosecutors. In 2014 he pleaded responsible to collaborating in a verify cashing scheme and was sentenced to 5 years of probation.
Petrosyants is simply the most recent of Adams’ associates to search out himself entangled within the prison justice system.
Adams’ former chief advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, has been indicted twice on corruption expenses. One in every of his longtime associates, Jesse Hamilton, is a co-defendant with Lewis-Martin on certainly one of her circumstances. And his buildings commissioner, Eric Ulrich, additionally faces expenses of pocketing bribes in alternate for serving to out people in search of favors from Metropolis Corridor.
A number of high advisors, together with his faculties chancellor, a deputy mayor and certainly one of his police commissioners, needed to resign after their telephones had been seized by federal investigators in an ongoing corruption probe.
Adams’ political fundraising has additionally attracted the eye of federal prosecutors. In September 2024, the then-mayor was indicted in a wide-ranging marketing campaign finance scheme that concerned soliciting and accepting unlawful straw donations, together with some organized by associates of the Turkish authorities.
One in every of his senior aides, Mohamed Bahi, later pleaded responsible to arranging unlawful straw donations for the mayor however Adams managed to flee reckoning weeks earlier than his trial was to start. The Trump Justice Division intervened and dropped the fees towards Adams in alternate for his help within the administration’s immigration deportation initiative.
Late Wednesday Todd Shapiro, a spokesperson for Adams, didn’t reply to THE CITY’s request for the previous mayor’s touch upon the fees filed towards his longtime pal.
