# Ramapo Chief Building Inspector Anthony Mallia arrested



## mark handler

Ramapo Chief Building Inspector Anthony Mallia arrested
http://www.lohud.com/story/news/crime/2016/09/15/ramapo-anthony-mallia-arrested/90400110/
The scheme allegedly involved 33 new construction projects in 2015

RAMAPO - Chief Building Inspector Anthony Mallia was arrested Thursday night on 100 felony charges alleging he gave builders cut-rate fees, depriving the town taxpayers of more than $100,000.

Mallia's year-long scheme involved falsifying building permits and grossly undercharging contractors seeking permits, Rockland District Attorney Thomas Zugibe charged. The lost money is based upon the estimated cost of 33 new residential construction projects during 2015.

Zugibe said the elaborate scheme allegedly orchestrated by Mallia sidestepped public safety. Rockland District Attorney's Office detectives combed through Ramapo Building Department records to make the case, he said.

The investigation didn't find evidence that Mallia personally profited from the matter, according to Zugibe.

“This case goes to the very heart of corruption,”  Zugibe said. “His breach of the people's trust comes at a time when the residents  .... are demanding honesty from their leaders. Such self-serving criminal behavior severely undermines public confidence in government and will not be tolerated."

Mallia faces one count of second-degree grand larceny and 33 felony counts each of first-degree tampering with public records, first-degree falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing. He also is charged with misdemeanor official misconduct and theft of services.

Mallia was arrested at his home and arraigned in Ramapo Town Court on the charges about 9:30 p.m. He was escorted into court by investigators from the Rockland District Attorney's office with his hands handcuffed in front of him. Airmont Justice Karen Riley asked Mallia how much bail he could afford and he answered, "Very little."

Riley set bail at $15,000 cash or $30,000 bond. She said she was not comfortable releasing Mallia without bail based on the number of charges and the risk he could flee.

Mallia declined comment on the matter. He is due to return to Airmont Village Court on the charges Oct. 6. Executive Assistant District Attorney Richard Kennison Moran said authorities were continuing to investigate the case.

Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence did not return a call seeking comment. Deputy Supervisor Patrick Withers said he would be requesting an emergency meeting of the town board about the matter, which could take place as early as Friday.

Mallia's arrest comes as Ramapo remains under scrutiny from the state for allegedly not enforcing fire and zoning codes, allowing schools to operate without planning board approvals and buildings to linger with violations. The state Division of Building Standards and Codes has threatened to take control of Ramapo inspections because of issues.

STATE RIPS RAMAPO AND SPRING VALLEY ENFORCEMENT

A state Department of Education agency also found violations at several schools inspected by one of Mallia's fire inspector, Adam Peltz, who had reported finding no violations on his visits. The town suspended Peltz for a month, demoted him from fire inspector, and took away his town car.

Mallia, also director of  building, planning and zoning, is paid $169,618, according to the state SeeThroughNY website, and lives in Airmont, where his home is up for sale for $1 million. Ramapo initially hired Mallia in March 2008 as a part-time inspector at $24,127 a year. He shot up the ladder to assistant director of building and zoning and building inspector in 2011 before getting his leadership post several years ago.

Under his tenure, the Rockland County Health Department also began inspecting schools and other buildings under the county sanitary code.

In a statement issued Thursday night, Rockland County Executive Ed Day said: "What happens in Ramapo affects all of Rockland. When one official responsible for carrying out the taxpayer’s business applies the rules unfairly, we all suffer. There is one set of rules, one set of laws that everyone is expected to follow.”

The District Attorney's Office investigation into Mallia and the Building Department follows several arrests within the past year by an anti-corruption task force in conjunction with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office.

Former Councilman Samuel Tress, 71, resigned his seat Sept. 1 after pleading guilty to official misconduct for admitting he voted as a Zoning Board of Appeals member on a housing development in which he had a financial interest

Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence and former deputy town attorney Aaron Troodler, meanwhile, face federal charges of securities and wire fraud and conspiracy involving the financing of the town's baseball stadium and other projects developed through the town's Ramapo Development Corp. They face trial in January. They and two other local officials face related SEC civil charges.

Meanwhile, the former mayor of Spring Valley, Noramie Jasmin, and former deputy mayor, Joseph Desmaret, are serving federal prison terms for taking bribes offered by a crooked Monsey developer working undercover for the FBI and Rockland District Attorney's Office.

Twitter: @lohudlegal

Officials: State must take over Ramapo fire inspections
RAMAPO - New York state officials are expected to hand down an order calling on the town to immediately enforce fire and zoning codes in buildings and schools littered with violations, or face a state takeover.

Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski, D-New City, said the Department of state’s Division of Building Standards and Codes is preparing to issue an order that Ramapo's housing department take corrective action to enforce safety and fire codes.

“This is the first step in finally restoring some law and order in this town," Zebrowski said Friday. "Over the past several years, we’ve been documenting instance after instance where the building, fire and zoning codes have been completely ignored.”

Zebrowski said that he is calling for an “abbreviated time frame of compliance” for Ramapo of 10 day. The assemblyman added he had little faith in the town's ability to comply with order, and called for either the state or Rockland County to take over Ramapo's building department as soon as possible.

Town officials, Zebrowski said, "dangerously turn a blind eye to obvious life-threatening conditions.”

The state's order is expected to be issued late Friday or Monday.

The order is expected to be similar to the one the state issued to Spring Valley in October regarding uninspected buildings rife with dangers to tenants and students.

Earlier Friday, Zebrowski and other lawmakers, as well as emergency officials, joined together at the Rockland County Fire Training Center to call for immediate state action in Ramapo and Spring Valley, where they said fire and building codes have not been followed. They said a systemic failure of code enforcement warrants intervention from the highest level in the wake of a fire inspection scandal.

Firefighters described conditions they say they are routinely navigating in private schools in Ramapo and Spring Valley — exit doors with deadbolts, exposed wiring, and extension cords snaking across bathrooms floors.

First responders "more and more have been responding to conditions that were not only deplorable, but clearly illegal," Zebrowski said.

At the training center, Zebrowski also called for state officials to take over the Ramapo and Spring Valley building departments or give Rockland County the authority to do so. He said the state has warned those municipalities about that possibility, and that it was crucial to protect the safety of students who are being taught in unsafe conditions.

"These are conditions that are asking for a tragedy to happen. I've had fruitful conversations with the state. We're hoping that (action) will be (taken) rather immediately," said Zebrowski, who was joined by Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, D-Suffern, and state Sen. David Carlucci, D-Clarkstown.

Gordon Wren Jr., the county's fire and emergency services coordinator, noted the state recommended that Spring Valley hire more inspectors, which the village has not done.

"That's sending a loud message," he said.

Wren cited the property at 33 Forshay Road in Monsey as an example of this issue. The property includes a single-family house and is illegally operating as a yeshiva and bakery, with trailers dumped onto the land, he said.
A violation dated April 4 was seen posted on one of the trailers Friday afternoon, with the lights still on inside a trailer that was surrounded by broken windows, debris, garbage and graffiti. Wren said the yeshiva was still being used despite the conditions.

"If your child was in one of those schools, how many days would you wait for action? We cannot let this go on month after month after month for the inevitable tragedy," said Rockland County Executive Ed Day.

The news conference followed the revelation this week that the state has accused Ramapo Fire Inspector Adam Peltz of carrying out shoddy inspections at four private schools in the county: The Rockland Institute for Special Education, Bais Yaakov, Green Meadow Waldorf and Bais Yehuda.

Peltz, who also serves as the president of the Monsey Fire Department, was assigned to desk duty earlier this week by Ramapo Building Inspector Anthony Mallia, according to Ramapo Town Attorney Michael Klein.

Peltz's benching was disclosed a day before town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence was arrested on federal charges stemming from Ramapo's controversial baseball stadium.

The number of illegal private schools and other buildings in Ramapo prompted the state Division of Building Standards and Codes to threaten to take control of town inspections.


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## linnrg

the whole place has problems!


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## JCraver

So he falsified 33 permit apps and that alone was worth $100 grand?  $3000 per builder/house?

I'm not saying what he did was right, but if the above is true then the City fathers should be going to jail too. For grand theft.


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## fatboy

Sounds pretty bad........


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## Pcinspector1

He should run for office!


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## conarb

JCraver said:


> So he falsified 33 permit apps and that alone was worth $100 grand?  $3000 per builder/house?
> 
> I'm not saying what he did was right, but if the above is true then the City fathers should be going to jail too. For grand theft.


I don't know about New York but in California it's against the law for a building department to charge more than the cost of delivery of services, otherwise it's a tax and the fees would have to be voted on by the electorate, if the department was operating on whatever fees he was charging maybe that was enough.


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## ICE

conarb said:


> I don't know about New York but in California it's against the law for a building department to charge more than the cost of delivery of services, otherwise it's a tax and the fees would have to be voted on by the electorate, if the department was operating on whatever fees he was charging maybe that was enough.


I have heard about that.  Shouldn't somebody tell the building departments?


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## conarb

Tiger:

Everybody should know, during the housing boom several cities in the Central Valley were sued by a NAHB legal team, they lost and paid judgments, several continued to do the same thing and were sued again an lost again, and paid again, apparently they decided that permits were so profitable that it was worth the legal fees to violate the law. 

The workaround that the crooks are using is to bring other services under the umbrella of the building department, Santa Clara has brought their affordable housing compliance into the building department, to get a permit and pay money you have to take a number, a seat, and wait in line while poor people are taking the money in the way of subsidized housing vouchers.   Contra Costa County has even changed their name from the Building Department to *The Department of Conservation and Development*, the development division makes the money through permit fees and the conservation part spends the money on a host of different wealth redistribution things. 

It stems from Prop 13 that made all taxes subject to a vote, many corrupt cities started creating all kinds of fees for services to replace the lost income, I don't recall whether it was in a subsequent initiative or in court decisions but it became law that all fees for services had to be limited to the specific services rendered by the AHJ. 

I read recently that Russia had discovered permits, in the past bribing public officials was common, they are charging permit fees now in place of the bribes, same thing, the money just gets spread into more pockets.  In the 70s during the election time when we were going to be voting on Prop 13 all of us were for it, except for Herbie my tile setter, he was a left wing sort of guy and he said: "Just wait, if this passes you guys will be paying thousands for your building permits rather than hundreds."  Herbie was right.


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## ICE

Orange County lost a similar lawsuit.  They had just hired a bunch of inspectors and purchased new vehicles.  Layoffs and a fire sale ensued.


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## cda

Guess Zuck should have hooked up with Anthony!!

http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/16/technology/zuckerberg-homes/index.html


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## conarb

cda said:


> Guess Zuck should have hooked up with Anthony!!
> 
> http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/16/technology/zuckerberg-homes/index.html


The story behind that is that Zuck had a rather ordinary 1930s Palo Alto home, a guy who called himself a 'developer' (you don't need any kind of license to be a 'developer', you just have to hire licensed people) bought the home next door and hired an architect to design a large home with many bedrooms and garages, when it went to Design Review he explained that he needed so many bedrooms and garages because he intended to sell the completed home to an African Prince with many children and cars, lots of bedroom windows on the top floor were situated to look right into Zuck's master bedroom window, when Zuck objected the 'developer' magnanimously offered to sell the existing home to him for several million more than he paid, seeing the blackmail Zuck sued and years of litigation ensued, in the meantime Zuck bought up the remaining surrounding homes, to prevent more blackmail Zuck presented plans for smaller surrounding homes that he would retain ownership.  Some of those African princes have multiple wives and 25 to 50 kids, and with all the money we pump into Africa they have fleets of Rolls Royces, Ferraris, etc. 

Look at what would have happened to the Palo Alto schools, most of those African countries have IQs in the 60s range, the politically correct call that 'developmentally disabled', psychologists ranked them: 


> *Introduction*
> Two French psychologists, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, created the first "modern intelligence
> test" in 1911, which measured intelligence quotient ("IQ").
> 
> *Intelligence Levels*
> As psychologists developed and refined IQ Testing, classification systems were established, and any
> child with an IQ of above 70 was considered "normal", while those with scores above 130 were
> considered "gifted."
> 
> *Retardation Levels*
> To classify scores below 70, psychologists invented a scale of "retardation"
> -
> *Morons, Imbeciles, and Idiots:*
> 
> *Morons*
> -
> Those with IQs between 51 and 70 (adequate learning skills to complete menial tasks and  to  communicate)
> 
> *Imbeciles*
> -
> Those with IQs between 26 and 50 (unable to progress past a mental age of approximately six)
> 
> *Idiots*
> -
> those with IQs between 0 and 25 (poor motor skills, extremely limited communication, and little response to stimulus)
> 
> The moron/imbecile/idiot classification system remained in use until the early 1970s.¹



All of these groups are protected by ADA, and they have to be educated in the public school system, a recently retired teacher told me that what her school district is doing is assigning a 'special education' teacher to each retarded child in the classroom.  As far as city streets are concerned any moron can get a drivers' license now, I had to renew mine a year ago and it is a joke, they are now designed to be passable by people who can't read or write. 

Palo Alto ought to give Zuck whatever he wants, by paying the blackmail he saved the city from streets full of morons being run over by morons driving Ferraris and Lamborghinis.  



¹ http://www.campbellmgold.com/archive_esoteric/morons_imbeciles_idiots.pdf


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## mark handler

Judge dismisses criminal charges against Spring Valley building inspector
http://hudsonvalley.news12.com/news...t-spring-valley-building-inspector-1.12785046
NEW CITY - A Rockland County judge dismissed all of the criminal charges against Spring Valley's building inspector on Tuesday.
Walter Booker had been indicted on grand larceny, official misconduct and other charges by the district attorney's office.
It was alleged that Booker falsified documents in his capacity as Spring Valley building inspector so that a homeowner could falsely claim a tax deduction

Judge David Zuckerman ruled there was no larceny, and the other charges should not have been filed either.
According to Booker, he's been hampered by a lack of staff to properly enforce local codes. This week, the New York Department of State announced a monitor would be assigned to investigate the workings of the Spring Valley Building Department.
County Executive Ed Day says he is just happy that the state will be monitoring the Building Department.
"We've heard promises before and they fell quite short. So, I have every belief this time that we will move forward, the state will do what has to be done,” he said.
Prosecutors say they may still appeal the judge’s ruling.
The complaints about the Spring Valley Building Department are separate from similar complaints made against the Town of Ramapo.


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