Eric Adams aide under FBI investigation was key player at fundraiser with reported ‘straw’ donations

Winnie Greco, a longtime Eric Adams aide now under FBI investigation, was a key player at a secretive fundraiser that netted the future New York mayor what appears to be illegal campaign cash, according to interviews with purported donors to the event and video footage unearthed by the Guardian and the City. The City and the news site Documented previously reported on several suspicious donations stemming from the fundraiser, which was hosted in August of 2021 at the home of a Queens mall operator. One listed donor to the fundraiser, a low-wage employee at that mall, admitted to being reimbursed in cash after donating to Adams at the behest of their employer – an act that would constitute an illegal "straw" donation. Three other purported donors denied giving to Adams, including a woman who was listed in the campaign's financial disclosures as a "deliveryman" at a restaurant in the mall that she never worked for and that doesn't do delivery.

At the time of the original reporting, the role of Greco at the mall operator's event was not publicly known. The newly unearthed footage shows the aide escorting Adams in and out of the event, stage-managing photo ops for the candidate, and hugging and laughing with family members of the evening's host, Lian Wu Shao, the chairman of Queens' New World Mall.

Greco, a prolific fundraising liaison for Adams, has also played a central role in at least two other Adams fundraisers in which purported donors said their donations were forged or resulted in illegal cash reimbursements, as the Guardian, the City, and Documented have previously reported.

Last February, following a series of stories on Greco by the three outlets, the FBI raided two of Greco's homes and Shao's mall.

Steven Brill, an attorney representing Greco, declined to answer questions about his client's fundraising activities.

Adams's campaign attorney, Vito Pitta, did not respond to questions about Greco's role in the event or the alleged straw donations, but said the campaign is reviewing the details of the fundraiser.

The footage of the fundraiser at Shao's home also casts doubt on the Adams campaign's past characterizations of the event and his team's compliance with campaign finance laws.

Last year in response to questions about the suspicious donations, Adams's campaign insisted in an email to the City that Shao's fundraiser was bankrolled by the people who attended the event that evening, and that "many" of these attendees were employees of a local grocery chain, partially owned by Shao's family.

Campaign finance records show that just under 200 small donors gave to Shao's fundraiser on the day of the event, including almost 40 cashiers and other employees from Shao's grocery chain, who each gave exactly $249.

But the footage shows that only a few dozen guests, not around 200, attended the fundraiser. And most of them, wearing dress shirts and dresses and raising glasses of expensive red wine to toast Shao, appear to be his relatives and business associates, not his low-wage workers.

In addition, at least seven of the people listed in the campaign's financial disclosures as having contributed to the barbecue that day said they never attended – or did not recall attending – the fundraising event, which took place at the Shao family's $4m mansion outside New York City, where a select crowd enjoyed catered sushi and lobster.

The discrepancy between the footage of the intimate event and the Adams campaign's description of it as a large, grassroots fundraiser raises questions about whether his staff knowingly accepted campaign cash that wealthy interests had bundled together and falsely attributed to an army of small donors in order to score additional taxpayer dollars for the campaign.

New York City's campaign finance board runs a public matching fund program that provides candidates with eight-to-one matches for donations of $250 or less, and nearly all of the donations from Shao's fundraiser were for exactly $249 and $250. Thanks to the small nature of most of these donations, his campaign team was able to apply for more than $300,000 in taxpayer-funded matching funds.

The revelations about Shao's fundraiser come on the heels of September's explosive federal indictment which accused Adams's 2021 mayoral campaign of similar conduct: knowingly soliciting and accepting illegal donations from wealthy interests – in that case, donors with ties to the Turkish government – who passed their money through small "straw" donors in order to score Adams additional public matching funds .

Adams, who faces charges of wire fraud, bribery and soliciting campaign donations from foreign nationals, has pleaded not guilty.

After the indictment, which also referred to Greco without naming her, the longtime Adams aide resigned from her government post as Adams's Asian affairs director.

She is currently being investigated as part of a separate federal probe by prosecutors in New York's eastern district, whose inquiry resulted in the recent raids on her two homes and Shao's mall.

As of now Greco has not been publicly charged with any crime.

Low-wageemployees say mall management pushed them to donate New York City campaign finance rules attempt to curb the influence of business interests in politics, like those of the Shao family, by limiting how much individuals can give to candidates who participate in the city's public matching funds program. By January of 2021, Shao, chairman of Queens' New World Mall and the local grocery chain, which is called J-Mart, had already donated $2,000 to Adams, the maximum he was allowed to give at that time.

But in the months after Shao made his big individual donation, a swarm of his subordinates suddenly started donating in droves, despite the fact that few of them had ever shown an interest in local elections before.

On 18 April of that year, for example, Shao's son, William, a co-owner of J-Mart, gave $249 to the Adams campaign. The same day, the campaign reported receiving the same amount from 30 J-Mart and New World Mall employees, including more than a dozen cashiers and servers, none of whom were registered to vote at the time. That bundle of purported small donations put nearly $8,000 into Adams's campaign coffers, and allowed his campaign team to ask authorities for more than $37,000 in taxpayer-funded matching funds.

Campaign finance board records show regulators repeatedly asked Adams's team to explain who, if anyone, had bundled this haul together, which came from a fundraising event held at a restaurant at the mall, partially owned by Shao's wife.

Adams's team did not disclose whether any intermediaries were behind the cluster of donations ahead of the election in response to regulators' inquiries.

Several workers at Shao's mall interviewed for this story, however, said that they were directed to make the donations by members of mall management. One purported donor, who works at the New World Mall's food court, said he gave $249 on 18 April after somebody from the mall's office approached him and asked him to donate. Another New World Mall employee, who made a campaign donation a few months later, said that "mall office people" handed him and his colleagues contribution forms and collected checks from them at the office.

Some employees insisted they donated of their own volition.

Standing outside his apartment door, Yuzan Qui, a former bookkeeper employed by J-Mart, said that on 18 June 2021, he donated $249 to Adams, rather than the more customary donation of $250, because that was the exact amount that he had left in his bank account.

But the same day, 17 of his colleagues, also employees of the Shao family's mall or grocery chain, each gave the same amount: $249. The donations were also reported to have come from a fundraiser at the restaurant in the mall, partially owned by Shao's wife. The small donations from that June fundraiser, which added up to nearly $5,000, allowed the Adams campaign to ask for almost $40,000 more in additional public matching funds.

Campaign finance regulators again asked Adams's team to identify who, if anyone, had bundled together these donations. Adams's staff again failed to provide them with an answer ahead of the election – a routine failure by his campaign.

At least one New World Mall employee suggested the donation drive at the Shao family's mall was not entirely voluntary.

That employee, the self-described straw donor, said that they only gave after they were approached at work by a higher up at the mall. The higher up knew the employee's boss, a vendor at the mall, so the employee said they allowed the higher up to use their identity for a campaign contribution, then reimbursed them in cash.

"I don't really know how the donation process works," the employee said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their job. "But I gave the person my identity, and that was it – to use my identity, and they pay the money."

Federal prosecutors from the eastern district of New York declined to comment on whether they are now investigating the family of Lian Wu Shao following their raid of his mall in Queens.

Shao did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails seeking comment ahead of this story.