A new report is casting doubt on numerous donations made earlier in the year to the Mayor Eric Adams’s reelection bid, which is already under heavy scrutiny. An investigation from The City found that several donations made to the campaign in May appear to have been made by straw donors and were ultimately submitted to the city’s public matching-funds program.
The 17 donations, which were all for the maximum individual contribution limit of $2,100, were all made by credit card, with ten of the contributions stemming from employees of the Brooklyn-based Allstar Homecare Agency and their relatives. But The City found that most of the donors it spoke to came from working-class backgrounds despite the sizable donation associated with their names:
Two reported on contribution forms they were unemployed. There were seven home health aides, who typically earn about $20 per hour, a front desk clerk, a secretary, a pre-school teacher, a hair stylist and a laundromat worker. Sixteen of the 17 donors had not donated to any New York City politician in the last two decades.
The mother-in-law of one of the donors expressed surprise at the notion that her son-in-law — who is an Allstar personal care aide — could have given thousands of dollars to Adams’ campaign.
“I find it impossible,” she told THE CITY. “If you had said something like $210, I would’ve said, ‘OK, maybe!’ But $2,100? He’s really — he really has very little money. I don’t think he even makes $2,100 a month.”
The outlet found other discrepancies, including donations paid with a credit card with an out-of-state address or donors listing the Allstar business address as the billing address for the donation. Other donors told The City that they never donated to the campaign. The Adams campaign did not respond to questions from The City about the specific donations analyzed, but spokesman Todd Shapiro said in a statement that the campaign will work “closely and proactively” with the Campaign Finance Board to maintain compliance with finance rules.
Adams’s past campaigns have been dogged by reports of suspicious or potentially unvetted donations. Last September, the Justice Department indicted the mayor, alleging that Adams knowingly solicited illegal foreign contributions and straw donations and applied for public-matching funds using the illicit dollars, among other offenses.
Adams himself has long denied any wrongdoing, but others around him have been implicated. In 2024, Dwayne Montgomery, a former NYPD colleague of Adams, entered a guilty plea and acknowledged his role in a straw-donor scheme that would direct illegal donations to Adams’s 2021 mayoral campaign. Earlier this year, Brooklyn businessman Erden Arkan pleaded guilty, admitting that he solicited his employees for donations to Adams’s campaign and reimbursed them with the knowledge that the contributions would be used to seek public-matching funds.
Though the federal corruption case was controversially dismissed in April at the direction of the Trump-led Justice Department, the allegations have continued to have a ripple effect. Last year, the city Campaign Finance Board withheld millions of dollars in matching funds from Adams’s campaign, citing the claims of fraudulent fundraising made by federal prosecutors. Though Adams’s team attempted to appeal the board’s decision, a federal judge ruled in the board’s favor and dismissed the challenge. The Campaign Finance Board announced last week that it will continue to withhold matching funds from the Adams campaign, citing its failure to provide records and documentation concerning its donors and campaign events for the board’s ongoing investigation.
Over the last month, Adams’s reelection campaign has taken in $1.5 million in contributions, raking in support from members of the city’s real-estate community. The mayor is looking to stand out in the crowded general-election field and earn the support of the many wealthy donors who remain undecided between him Andrew Cuomo as their candidate of choice to defeat Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani.
