The owner of a Brooklyn real estate company pleaded guilty this week to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks to a homeless-shelter operator in a yearslong scheme to profit from programs meant to help homeless people.
The real estate company owner, Sheina Levin, specialized in renting housing to nonprofit groups. On Thursday, she admitted to bribing Victor Rivera, the former leader of one of the largest nonprofit homeless-shelter contractors in New York City, to lease property from her company and tap into a stream of city funding earmarked for housing homeless people, according to papers filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Mr. Rivera, the former chief executive of the Bronx Parent Housing Network, pleaded guilty last year to federal crimes related to the same scheme and was subsequently sentenced to 27 months in federal prison. His dealings with Ms. Levin, as well as a pattern of sexual assault and harassment accusations against him, were first detailed in a New York Times investigation in 2021.
