FORMER GENERAL COUNSEL OF NYC BOARD OF ELECTIONS PLEADS GUILTY TO TWO COUNTS OF OFFICIAL MISCONDUCT IN CONNECTION WITH UNAUTHORIZED CONDUCT WITH AN INTERN AT THE BOE AND ANOTHER INDIVIDUAL

 

 Jocelyn E. Strauber, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation (“DOI”), issued the following statement on today’s guilty plea by the former General Counsel of the New York City Board of Elections (BOE”) to two counts of Official Misconduct in connection with the unauthorized exercise of his official duties, specifically misconduct involving other individuals, including an intern, who worked at BOE. DOI began investigating the matter in 2020 after receiving an anonymous complaint regarding inappropriate activity by the defendant with interns. DOI worked in partnership with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office on the investigation.

 STEVEN H. RICHMAN, 63, of Brooklyn, N.Y., pleaded guilty in New York Criminal Court to two counts of Official Misconduct, which are class A misdemeanors. He received an unconditional discharge as part of the plea agreement. RICHMAN is required to report his conviction to the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court within 30 days.

 DOI Commissioner Jocelyn E. Strauber said, “This defendant exploited his position of authority with the BOE when he conditioned potential future job prospects for an intern he supervised, and another individual to whom he offered potential employment, on meeting improper demands to gratify his own personal interests. This conduct is not only outrageous and shameful; it is criminal. As a result, Steven Richman has acknowledged and pleaded guilty to Official Misconduct. I thank the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for their commitment to working with DOI on this important investigation.”

 According to the defendant’s plea allocution to two counts of Official Misconduct, RICHMAN was responsible for the hiring, supervision, and discipline of the legal interns and other staff at the BOE, where he served as General Counsel from 1999 to 2021. In that capacity, RICHMAN knowingly engaged in an unauthorized exercise of his official functions, in order to obtain a personal benefit. Specifically, in the summer of 2017, RICHMAN convinced an intern he supervised that he could help the intern obtain a job as a security guard at political events, if the intern could pass a so-called “physical fitness assessment” to be administered by RICHMAN. RICHMAN used the BOE offices, after official business hours, to conduct the assessment, measuring the intern’s body parts, placing the intern in wrestling holds and having the intern place RICHMAN in wrestling holds, and repeating the “assessment” several times thereafter. RICHMAN had no immediate intention of securing the intern a job as a security guard and never took any steps toward securing such a job. Separately, in August 2020, RICHMAN convinced another individual that he could use his General Counsel position to secure the individual a job as a security guard at a political event and that the individual would have to pass a purported physical fitness evaluation that would be administered by RICHMAN. RICHMAN and the individual entered the BOE offices on Sunday, August 16, 2020, and after the individual completed an interview and paperwork, RICHMAN performed an “assessment” that was similar to the one RICHMAN conducted of the intern in 2017. In the 2020 incident, RICHMAN took photos during the “assessment,” and did not take any steps toward securing the individual a job as a security guard.

 RICHMAN was employed by the BOE from January 1999 until he resigned in January 2021 in the middle of this investigation. At that time, he received a salary of $193,730.

 Commissioner Strauber thanked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his staff for their prosecution of this matter. Assistant District Attorney Daniel Passeser of the District Attorney’s Major Economic Crimes Bureau is handling the case.

 At DOI, the investigation was handled by DOI’s Office of the Inspector General for the BOE, specifically Special Investigator Gina N. Diaz, under the supervision of Deputy Inspector General Trenton Sweeney, Inspectors General Juve Hippolyte and Eleonora Rivkin, Deputy Commissioner/ Chief of Investigations Dominick Zarrella and First Deputy Commissioner Daniel G. Cort.