Maybe this time someone will listen.
We’re talking about the Hamister Hotel now being built in downtown Niagara Falls.
And so far, as far as we can tell, federal and state investigators seem content to ignore this ‘hide in plain sight’ financing fraud, perhaps because the US Attorney until recently was William Hochul, the husband of Gov. Cuomo’s lieutenant governor, Kathy Hochul.
This would seem to make Hamister, a Cuomo donor and ally of Dyster, a protected class of citizen in Western New York.
However, with the new Trump administration and an expected new US Attorney appointed sometime next year, this clear scam of the taxpayers may be green lit to be investigated after all.
Maybe FBI Special Agent Brian Burns will get the nod to look into this.
More than a year and half ago, the Reporter offered to provide US Attorney Hochul incontrovertible evidence that Hamister was fraudulently inflating the construction cost of his hotel in order to get more taxpayer money.
At first his office agreed, then later declined to meet with Reporter publisher Frank Parlato who was then under investigation for a number of improbable and what will soon be revealed as unprovable charges.
The result with Hamister was that nothing happened other than Parlato being indicted several months later on charges that rely on a dead man who never claimed he was a victim, a contract that was never signed and a fanciful story that perfectly legal activities can be made illegal if you make up enough lies to create a circumstantial but utterly fictional story. (see related reports in this edition).
Three men with a shovel. While Mayor Paul Dyster (left) may not make a good Santa Claus for the taxpayers of Niagara Falls, he has been a good Santa to millionaire developers like Mark Hamister (center).
Above, Hamister gets help from Mayor Dyster and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (right) in breaking ground for a small hotel with a lot of subsidies, some 300 feet from the entrance to the Niagara Falls State Park.
The Reporter believes the deal involved initially a rigged selection scheme and later a fraudulently, provably, inflated price tag for the smallish, low amenities hotel to be built on one of the most important undeveloped sites in Niagara Falls – in order to secure millions more in taxpayer subsidies for Hamister.
There is a chance that Dyster and Cuomo were secretly complicit in arranging the financing scheme.
As Franklin said, “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.”
Let’s see how this shakes out.
Hochul is now in the private sector, having landed a $400,000 plus job with Delaware North – another frequent target of the Reporter for their commerce driven “choke the city of Niagara Falls” approach to concessions in the Niagara Falls State Park.
We have reported and will have much more to report about the secret, astonishing deal Delaware North’s Jeremy Jacobs cut with Gov. Cuomo for the now stalled WonderFalls project at the site of the old Rainbow Mall, and how Gov. Cuomo left developer Michael DiCienzo – who was not a Cuomo donor – out in the cold despite his having a superior offer – with far less taxpayer subsidies – in favor of big time Cuomo donor Jacobs.
Delaware North’s hire of Hochul is seen by some as a gesture in the category of “the least they could do” sincerely returning the good deed for the astounding generosity of the Cuomo-Kathy Hochul team to Jacobs for the WonderFalls Project.
But more on that in coming weeks.
First things first: next week and for several weeks thereafter we will once again lay out the clear and incontrovertible evidence that the Hamister hotel deal in Niagara Falls inflated construction costs by 100 percent to secure more taxpayer subsidies that were tied to a ratio of expenditure to subsidies.
Had Hamister reported the true construction cost of his hotel he would have been entitled to half the subsidies he got from state taxpayers.
We will also report on how Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Paul Dyster either willfully ignored or were complicit in the scheme to get Hamister more taxpayer subsidies after Hamister doubled the actual cost of construction for his 128 +/- room Hyatt Place hotel.
Perhaps, while we await the appointment of the next local US Attorney, either New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, or US Attorney Preet Bharara will take a look at this extremely low hanging fruit.
Stay tuned.
Niagara Reporter
