Details emerge on sweeping impending indictment of Lucchese Family
Buildings officials have been forced to re-inspect hundreds of construction sites after at least six inspectors were swept up in a mob-connected corruption probe that involved them taking bribes and dealing drugs, law-enforcement sources said yesterday.
The inspectors have yet to be charged, but have all quit, Mayor Bloomberg said -- the day after The Post broke the news of the scandal.
"They have resigned . . . You can rest assured we're not going to tolerate any of this," the mayor said.
"This is an industry that obviously for a long period of time has had problems with lawbreakers. We keep working at it and working at it, and hopefully, someday, we'll get rid of everybody in the construction industry that breaks the law."
Bloomberg's comments came a day after The Post revealed that building inspectors had been snared as part of an investigation into high-ranking Luchese crime-family figures. Red-faced city Buildings Department officials said they have been going over the suspect inspectors' work since June. The buildings involved are primarily in The Bronx.
Sources yesterday said that as many as 40 people would be arrested for bribery and bookmaking in as soon as a couple of weeks.
Investigators accidentally caught on to the inspectors' sleazy dealings when they picked up talk of bribes in wiretapped conversations among New Jersey mob bosses Joseph DiNapoli, Matthew Madonna and Aniello Migliore, as part of a bookmaking probe, sources said.
That led them to one man who worked as an "expediter" -- smoothing over code violations with the department -- who was monitored and caught taking bribes. When confronted, the man -- who had heavy gambling debts -- agreed to cooperate and helped investigators nail the others.
Among those implicated were brothers Charles and Frank Francomano of Yonkers -- who law-enforcement sources say were full-blown Lucchese associates.
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