Three New Jersey residents are accused of siphoning roughly $1.1 million out of New York City’s rental assistance program by posing as distressed tenants and routing the payments into accounts disguised as landlords’ accounts. Officials announced the charges against Erica Williams, Kareem Canty and Tajizhanae Whitaker this past Thursday, alleging the scheme ran from 2021 through 2025 and relied on dozens of fraudulent applications submitted to the city’s Human Resources Administration.
According to the New York Post, Williams, 39, of Union, New Jersey, allegedly spearheaded the operation, posing as a tenant facing hardship while directing the resulting rental payments to accounts falsely presented as belonging to landlords. She was accused alongside Canty, 33, of East Orange, and Whitaker, 29, of Dacula, New Jersey. Prosecutors reportedly said the three provided HRA with tenants’ names, birthdates and Social Security numbers to push the fake applications through, and that some of the tenants whose information was used did not know about the alleged scheme.
Of the group’s 170 applications, the city’s Human Resources Administration approved 94 of them, according to prosecutors cited by the Post, ultimately issuing the trio approximately $1.1 million in funds. The program at issue is intended to assist low-income New Yorkers, and HRA is supposed to send those payments directly to a tenant’s landlord or property manager rather than to the tenant.
Arrests and an Ongoing Multi-Agency Probe
Department of Investigation Commissioner Nadia Shihata announced the charges Thursday. Williams, Canty and Whitaker were arrested Wednesday morning in a joint investigation involving the city Department of Investigation, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Internal Revenue Service, per the same report. Whitaker was arrested in Georgia and remained in custody there as of Thursday, while Williams and Canty appeared in Manhattan court Wednesday evening and were released after posting $50,000 bond apiece…