It’s payback time.
Three men who “treated the city like their own giant ATM” by cheating the city out of millions of dollars on the costly CityTime project were sentenced to 20 years in prison Monday in a standing-room-only courtroom.
Prosecutors asked Manhattan Federal Judge George Daniels to impose harsh sentences of 105 years, 80 years and up to 40 years on Gerard Denault, Mark Mazer and Dmitry Aronshtein, respectively, in the half-billion-dollar boondoggle.
Lawyers for Denault and Mazer recommended prison terms of five years for their clients, while a lawyer for Aronshtein suggested a sentence of no more than two.
“This is not a case that warrants … something that is tantamount to a life sentence,” said Denault’s lawyer, Barry Bohrer.
He said his client is a good man who struggled with alcoholism after the death of his daughter, and noted that then-mayor Mike Bloomberg praised CityTime even after the men were arrested.
“He thought the city got a good deal,” Bohrer said of Bloomberg.
Mazer’s lawyer, Gerald Shargel, also slammed the 80-year sentence recommended by the feds.
“The threat of absolute ruination is before you,” Shargel thundered. “Have we lost our minds?”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Howard Master blasted the pleas for leniency, and urged the judge to throw the book at the trio.
“These men’s motives were utterly venal,” he said.
“Is it the act of a good person to decide for themselves” to take tens millions of dollars “they had no right to?” he asked. “Money that could have gone to pay teachers, to pay police officers, that could have gone back into the pockets of the public?”
Judge George Daniel sided with the prosecution, and gave the men the maximum sentence for each count — meaning 105 years for Denault, 80 years for Mazer and 40 years for Aronshtein; but since he ruled the sentences should be served concurrently, each will spend about 20 years behind bars.
Daniels said the case showed the need for “significant reform.”
“The city did little to prevent their brazen schemes,” Daniels said, calling the city’s current contracting process an “invitation not just for corruption but for waste and fraud.”
“Until significant reforms are instituted … criminal prosecutions of fraud against the city will continue,” the judge said.
In November, a jury found the trio guilty of siphoning away nearly $100 million associated with CityTime in a kickback and money laundering scheme that Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara called “one of the largest and most brazen frauds” in city history.
Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez first raised questions in 2009 about the CityTime, which was aimed at modernizing the city’s byzantine payroll system.
The city had hired Mazer as a computer consultant in 2004 to streamline the mammoth project.
But he wasn’t satisfied with his hefty salary. Mazer, 50, directed millions to crooked staffing companies, then took kickbacks through overseas bank accounts.
He gobbled up about $30 million.
Aronshtein, 53, Mazer’s uncle, headed one of the companies.
Denault, 52, who worked on CityTime as a bigwig with contractor S.A.I.C., had a similar con.
With Mazer and Denault running the show, the project, budgeted at $63 million in 1998, ballooned to roughly $700 million.
Denault took secret cash kickbacks below a Manhattan massage parlor, and defendants stored more than a million dollars in cash in safe deposit boxes on Long Island, jurors heard in the month-long trial. In all, eight people have been convicted in connection with the scam.
Daniels said the men, who plan to appeal, lacked remorse.
They waved to tearful relatives as they were immediately shipped off to prison.
“I feel like the biggest loser in the world for putting my wife and my family in this situation,” said Aronshtein, the only defendant to address the judge in court.
Mayor de Blasio called the scandal “a very sad chapter for the city.”
He added: “It is a reminder of how vigilant we have to be … I think this one got missed and obviously it cost the city a lot.”
Mark Peters, the commissioner of the city Department of Investigation, said he directed staff last month to design new safeguards for city technology contracts.
