FBI agents raided two Bronx homes owned by a top aide to Mayor Eric Adams early Thursday morning, along with the offices of a Queens mall that hosted Adams campaign operations.
THE CITY previously uncovered strong evidence of potentially illegal straw donations tied to the mall.
The aide, Adams’ director of Asian affairs Winnie Greco, was deeply involved in eight separate fundraising events at the New World Mall that generated tens of thousands of dollars for Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign.
She is on sick leave from her job after having a medical episode during the FBI raid and going to the hospital, according to an Adams administration source. Once her sick leave is over, and if she does not have any unused vacation time, she will then be on unpaid leave and not conducting any governmental business.
Greco is the third person associated with Adams whose home was raided by federal officials in the past four months. In November, the FBI raided the homes of Brianna Suggs, then Adams’ chief fundraiser, and Rana Abbasova, an aide in Adams’ international affairs office.
One New World Mall worker told THE CITY that she was asked by employers to make a $249 donation — and later reimbursed. That would make it a “straw” donation, a criminal violation that has already led to the prosecution of one set of Adams fundraisers by the Manhattan District Attorney, as well as a separate investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office into another set of donors with links to the Turkish government.
Another New World Mall employee told THE CITY she never made out a check to the campaign and didn’t recognize the signature on the check. Nearly two dozen others who donated claimed that they made their contributions at the behest of or with encouragement from mall managers.
The Bronx raids, first reported by News 12, began at around 6 a.m., when FBI agents, acting in conjunction with the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office, swooped down on two homes owned by Greco on Gillespie Avenue, sealing off intersections. The FBI later confirmed to THE CITY the sprawling New World Mall in Flushing as the site of a third raid.
One neighbor, who declined to give his name, told THE CITY that more than a dozen FBI officials were on Gillespie Avenue ready to enter the home. “They had all the blocks closed off, every intersection,” he said. “It was frozen for a bit. Nobody was allowed to leave.”
An Adams spokesperson said Thursday in a statement about the raid: “Our administration will always follow the law, and we always expect all our employees to adhere to the strictest ethical guidelines. As we have repeatedly said, we don’t comment on matters that are under review, but will fully cooperate with any review underway. The mayor has not been accused of any wrongdoing.”
Greco, who is paid $100,000 a year for her City Hall job, is already being probed by the city’s Department of Investigation in the aftermath of another story by THE CITY detailing allegations of ethical improprieties against her. One business executive alleged to THE CITY that Greco solicited a $10,000 donation for a nonprofit she had founded as a condition for attending an event at Gracie Mansion with Adams honoring the Chinese community. A former Adams campaign volunteer who obtained a city government job with Greco’s help told THE CITY that Greco demanded he supervise renovations at one of her houses for no pay.
A longtime advisor to Adams dating back to his start as Brooklyn borough president a decade ago, Greco has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for his prior and current mayoral campaigns. Adams’ chief confidant and top political advisor at City Hall, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, once called Greco her “baby sister.”
When asked by THE CITY about Greco in November, Adams said he had a “hands-off policy when things are being reviewed.” Greco still appeared with him at some public events, including in Times Square on New Year’s Eve for the ball drop and at a women’s focused event later in January.
However, Greco was conspicuously absent from or played a smaller than usual role in Adams’ recent Lunar New Year celebrations.
Who Is Winnie Greco?
Greco began as a volunteer in the Brooklyn borough president’s office under Marty Markowitz in the late 2000s and stayed on as an unpaid Asian community “ambassador” for the borough president after Adams was elected, becoming a prolific fundraiser for his campaigns and interests.
She joined the Adams administration in her paid role soon after his inauguration in January 2022.
Although she wasn’t paid by Adams’ 2021 or 2025 campaigns, and played no official role according to a campaign spokesperson, Greco has served as a major fundraiser for Adams over the past decade.
During the campaign, Greco worked for months from a campaign office inside the New World Mall, where Adams held almost a dozen fundraisers. Last year THE CITY identified a cluster of $249 donations to Adams from dozens of low-wage mall employees. Through the eight-to-one match, the $28,739 donations by mall businesses’ cashiers, salespeople, and retirees added up to an extra $178,144 in potential public matching funds to Eric Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign.
THE CITY also identified a second cluster of suspicious donations from a fundraising event organized by Greco in October 2019 with a New York City-based appliance chain, AC & Appliances Center. The event raised $32,400 from dozens of $250 contributions. Nine of the donations came through money orders, a relatively hard-to-trace form of payment. A donor said two of the money orders were forged in his and his father’s names, with this father’s occupation listed as “housewife.”
Steven Wong, a Chinese community leader and committee member of Friends of Chinese Americans Endorse Eric Adams, said he would wait for the findings of the FBI’s investigation and believed it was a normal process for the FBI to follow leads they received.
“It’s encouraging to see so many individuals from our Chinese community engaging in politics, but it’s disappointing if they’re not truly serving the people. If Greco did anything illegal, there’s nothing we can do for her,” Wong said. “Adhering to the law and serving society is the genuine path for us to integrate into American society.”
In 2012, Greco established a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing a commemorative archway to Sunset Park in Brooklyn linked to Beijing as a sister city, which reported to the Internal Revenue Service it had raised $221,000 before the IRS revoked its nonprofit status after the group stopped filing financial statements.