Ulrich Trial: His Predecessor at Buildings Testifies That He Pushed for a Bakery Inspection

By Lucian Marchbanks, State Courts Correspondent

The first week of People v. Eric Ulrich showed a man complaining on the phone about favor-seekers. The second week, in Manhattan Supreme Court, turned to a narrower question: what Ulrich actually did for them.

Ulrich, a former three-term Queens Council member whom then-Mayor Eric Adams hired as a special adviser in January 2022 and named buildings commissioner that May, is on trial before Justice Daniel Conviser on bribery charges. Prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office allege he took more than $150,000 in cash and gifts, including a Mets season ticket package, from a circle of South Queens business owners in exchange for official favors. Ulrich was indicted in September 2023. He has pleaded not guilty, denies trading influence for money, and is presumed innocent. He chose a bench trial, so Conviser alone will decide the verdict.

What the court has heard

Assistant District Attorney Guy Tardanico has organized the case around three alleged favors, as he laid out in his opening statement on Oct. 19. The first was lifting a Department of Buildings vacate order on Fortunato Brothers bakery in Brooklyn after a March 2022 fire. The second was expediting a health inspection at Aldo’s Pizzeria in Ozone Park after the restaurant was shut down. The third was securing a higher-paying job at the Department of Correction for a family member, a favor tied to co-defendant Michael Mazzio, a Brooklyn towing company owner whom the defense calls Ulrich’s best friend.

Last week, the prosecution played wiretapped calls. On Oct. 21, the court heard recordings from the weeks around Adams’ inauguration in which Ulrich vented about constant requests for jobs in the new administration, according to the Queens Daily Eagle and City & State.

“What do these people want? Every f—ing day,” Ulrich said on one call. Much of his frustration, prosecutors say, was aimed at Joseph Livreri, owner of Aldo’s, who had been pressing him for a city job. “I don’t even know what f—ing agency to put him in,” Ulrich said on another.

Lt. Patrick O’Brien, an investigator for the district attorney’s office, testified about the office’s surveillance of Ulrich’s meetings with Livreri and others. He said investigators found five cell phones in Livreri’s possession when he was arrested.

The calls can be read two ways, and the two sides read them differently. To the prosecution, they show an official surrounded by people who expected to be repaid. To the defense, they show a politician who resented the pressure and did not act on it. In one call, Ulrich doubted that Livreri could pass a Department of Investigation background check.

The cooperators

Livreri and his brother, Anthony, pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and bribery for paying Ulrich $4,000 in 2022. Livreri has also admitted in court that he ran an illegal casino at the 89th Street Café in Ozone Park. Ulrich denies taking part in the high-stakes games.

Prosecutors allege the $4,000 was payment for the bakery favor. According to Tardanico, Ulrich called then-Buildings Commissioner Melanie La Rocca from a Queens diner while with Livreri on March 10, 2022, told her to “make sure they don’t send the wrong inspector,” and then arranged a meeting outside City Hall with La Rocca and the bakery’s architect. Tardanico said La Rocca, a de Blasio appointee still serving as commissioner at the time, “elevated the issue” and had her staff reinspect the property the same day, though no inspection had been scheduled or requested.

Ulrich denies receiving the money, as he has throughout.

The defense

Ulrich’s lawyer, David Jason Cohen of Cohen Forman Barone, has offered an unusually blunt defense. He told the court that Ulrich did take money from friends and associates, but to feed a gambling addiction that included illegal card rooms and “hundreds” of visits to Resorts World, not in exchange for official acts. “Call him an addicted gambler, call him an alcoholic, call him a foul-mouthed, unpolitically correct politician, but he was never a bribe receiver,” Cohen said in his opening.

Cohen has also portrayed Ulrich as “the architect of Eric Adams’ mayoral bid,” a man with too much at stake to risk it for small sums. He said Adams once warned Ulrich, “Watch your phone, watch your back,” about an investigation into the Ozone Park gambling spot. Adams spokesperson Todd Shapiro said Adams will not testify.

Mazzio, on trial with Ulrich, also denies bribery. “That’s how politics works, and it happens at every level of government,” his lawyer, James Froccaro, told the court. “You help out your supporters in all lawful ways.” Mazzio has said he and Ulrich shared the Mets tickets. Tardanico disputed that, telling the court Ulrich never chipped in and that “Mazzio wasn’t even a Mets fan.”

What La Rocca said

La Rocca took the stand on Friday, Oct. 30. She is not a defendant, and she was appointed by a different mayor. She testified that Ulrich asked her on March 10, 2022, to help get Fortunato Brothers reopened and to make sure the “right inspector” was sent, and that the vacate order was lifted the same day, the Queens Daily Eagle reported. On cross-examination, Cohen questioned her about the role of the bakery’s architect, Frank Quatela, and she said Ingrid Lewis-Martin, then a senior Adams adviser, had also asked her about the bakery. Her account may be the most important evidence on the bakery count. Prosecutors had also said they would call Connor Martinez, a former chief of staff at the Mayor’s Office of Community Affairs, about the pizzeria inspection.

In an email to The City Politic after her testimony, Cohen said the difference between La Rocca’s direct testimony and her cross-examination “was stark.” “She lacked forthrightness on basic questions on cross examination,” he said, adding that he wanted to see the transcript before drawing firmer conclusions. The trial is continuing.

There is a fine line in public corruption law between helping supporters, which every elected official does, and selling official action. The defense says Ulrich stayed on the right side of it, and the prosecution says he crossed it. Conviser will have to decide not just whether money changed hands, but whether it was exchanged for official acts.

Featured image: Eric Ulrich, then a City Council member, during a 2019 interview. Photo by JusPunjabiTV Official via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.