Omnibuild’s John Mingione speaks out about the accusation

John Mingione, former CEO of Omnibuild, is on a mission to clear his name.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office charged Mingione, Omnibuild and two employees last year, with prosecutors alleging that Omnibuild employees helped HFZ Capital Group’s Nir Meir in one part of a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme.

But Mingione claims in a new filing that he did the opposite of helping HFZ and Meir: He provided letters to the lenders and their attorneys alerting them that HFZ breached its contract with Omnibuild and was stealing the lenders’ money.

“The only thing I didn’t do was take Nir Meir and hang him out the window like Suge Knight did,” Mingione said, referring to a tale about the former CEO of Death Row Records and Vanilla Ice.

Omnibuild and Mingione, who have pleaded not guilty, allege that District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office did not provide these letters to the grand jury that indicted the company and its former manager.

The indictment has essentially put the company out of business, the filing states: It lost nearly $1 billion in revenue and laid off half of its employees. Mingione resigned a few months after the indictment.

Omnibuild claims its attorney gave the letters to the district attorney in the summer of 2020, but the district attorney did not present them to the grand jury. “We sent the letters, we embargoed the project (XI), we sued them, we defaulted on them,” Mingione said.

Oliver Storch, Meir’s lawyer, dismissed the new claims.

“Desperate criminal defendants will make desperate claims blaming others for their alleged misconduct,” he said. “Referring to possible violent retaliation against Mr. Meir, who is presumed innocent, is dangerous and intimidating.”

In an unusual move, Mingione spoke candidly The real deal about the accusation.

“It’s the most frustrating thing we’ve ever witnessed in our entire lives,” Mingione said. “At some point, if I thought I would have fallen on the sword and said I had done something wrong, I think they would have left Omnibuild out. But I didn’t do anything wrong.”

The district attorney’s office said TRD would respond in court documents.

Prosecutors charged former HFZ CEO Meir in February 2023 with masterminding fraud schemes, alleging that Meir moved hundreds of millions of dollars between real estate projects intended to keep them afloat despite obvious deficits.

Meir was fired from HFZ in late 2020. He spent the next two years dodging lawsuits while spending millions of dollars on gold, a $150,000-a-month rental house, strip clubs, and fine wine. Meir was finally arrested in February of last year at the Hotel 1 South Beach residences. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting sentencing on Rikers Island.

“Mr. Meir has pleaded not guilty and will address all allegations in the appropriate forum,” Storch added.

HFZ pleaded guilty and blamed Meir. Ziel Feldman, president and founder of HFZ, is not named in the indictment.

The XI is at the center of the alleged fraud scheme.

In 2017, the Children’s Investment Fund lent $1.25 billion to the condo project in Chelsea. After the loan funds were deposited into the project’s bank account, prosecutors allege that Meir transferred $253 million to different entities controlled by HFZ and then back to the project’s bank account. But once the money returned to the XI’s account, there was a shortfall of $37 million.

Prosecutors allege that HFZ and Omnibuild executives used subcontractors to inflate monthly invoices. This made it appear that the project was further along than it was and caused the lender to release additional funds to HFZ, according to the district attorney.

Omnibuild, Mingione and two additional Omnibuild employees, chief accounting officer Kevin Stewart and project executive Roy Galifi, are charged with grand theft.

But Omnibuild has insisted it is a victim of HFZ’s fraud, not an accomplice in the conspiracy. The firm has filed a civil lawsuit in New York state court against its lenders, Talos Capital, TCI Rep International and its parent, Children’s Investment Fund, and HFZ, alleging that it repeatedly notified HFZ and its lenders that payments for its work In the XI they were lost, but they were told to keep working and that the money would arrive.

Omnibuild put a 100 million dollar lien on project XI in 2020, citing payment shortfalls by HFZ.

“The district attorney’s office didn’t know anything about HFZ until we breached them,” Mingione said.

According to Omnibuild’s filing, the DA also concealed evidence that HFZ engaged in a check verification scheme in which HFZ provided a dozen checks that it did not have funds to cover.

Mingione said Meir would transfer money to Omnibuild, but would send physical checks to cover any shortfalls. In total, Meir sent more than 2,000 checks.

Meir “would say he was waiting for the EB-5 money to come in,” Mingione said.

Mingione claimed that Omnibuild attorneys discovered in discovery that HFZ obtained the EB-5 funds but did not invest the money in the project.

The stakes were high: XI would have propelled Omnibuild from a trusted midsize contractor to the company that built one of Manhattan’s most ambitious condo towers.

But Mingione, like Feldman, Meir’s ex-wife, and others, claims he was a victim of Meir’s false promises.

“The XI was a monstrous project that would have changed our portfolio,” Mingione said. “We knew what animal we were dealing with, but we didn’t know its extent. “You never think someone could be as bad as they say.”