The Orgy Of Waste & Corruption Continues In The Brooklyn Public Administrator's Office As City Comptroller Urges Introduction Of Real Oversight, Real Accountability

In Brooklyn, New York, the New York Post reports:

• Rest in peace? Easier said than done.
  
  The Brooklyn office that handles estates of the deceased is sitting on $7.5 million in unclaimed funds from cases that date back dozens of years — including one account that’s still open from 1934, an audit found.
  
  Comptroller Scott Stringer said the Brooklyn Public Administrator’s office had 457 open estate files as of late 2014 that ranged from 14 to 80 years old.
  
  The case from 1934 still remarkably contained $12,384.64 in undispersed funds stemming from the sale of two properties.
  
  The Brooklyn Public Administrator’s office also had no idea to which estates a total of $91,299 in bank account funds belonged – depriving unknown kin of their rightful inheritances.
  
  Auditors found similar deficiencies in the office of the Bronx Public Administrator, where a database listed an astounding 19,877 open estate cases in late 2013. But a subsequent review in of hard-copy files in early 2014 identified just 1,157 open accounts.
  
  “The Public Administrators offices in both Brooklyn and the Bronx have been in a state of disarray for far too long, leaving the assets of estate beneficiaries at a very real risk of fraud and waste,” said Stringer.(1)
  
  In its response, the office of Brooklyn Public Administrator Richard Buckheit, who only took the helm last year, said the age-old estates and other problems stemmed from longstanding issues with the office.
  
  “Identifying these estates, determining who is entitled to the remaining funds and then distributing the remaining funds is a long term project that will take a significant period of time to correct,” the office wrote, adding that the fixes were well underway.
  
  Bronx Public Administrator Frank Randazzo said many of the supposed problems identified by the comptroller were administrative in nature only, so that they had no practical implication on the office’s work.
  
  But comptroller officials countered that the disarray and rule-breaking at both offices opened the door to corruption and made external oversight all but impossible.
  
  “It’s long past time to introduce real oversight and real accountability, and fix this very serious problem,” said Stringer. “New Yorkers deserve a lot better.”

Source: Office managing estates of deceased sits on unclaimed $7.5M.

Go here for earlier posts on the orgy of corruption in the Brooklyn Public Administrator's Office.

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(1) For recent examples of the antics that go on in the Brooklyn & Bronx Public Administrator's offices, see:

• Nov. 2013 Manhattan District Attorney press release: Former Bookkeeper For Brooklyn Public Administrator Convicted Of Stealing More Than $2.6 Million From Estates Of Deceased Individuals,
  .
• March, 2015 New York Daily News: Bronx estate lawyer who stole from clients' wills sentenced to pay $150,000 fine (A Bronx estate lawyer exposed for stealing thousand$ from dead people's estates while working in the Bronx Public Administrator's Office bought his way out of 2-6 years prison time by agreeing to pay back $145,000. He pocketed more than $1.5 million in upfront fees between 2005 and April 2008 - money that should have gone to families of the deceased).