Exploring ties between political power broker and receivership system

A Newsday investigative report Sunday detailed how political power broker Gary Melius and five others -- all of whom have links to Melius -- got 55 percent of all fees set aside in 43 temporary property management cases over six years.

And to think that it began in Suffolk County courts with a computer randomly assigning cases, according to a court official. The key word here is random, as in a toss of a coin, a throw of some dice.

But hey, let's give the computer system the benefit of the doubt. Which means accepting that four of the most lucrative temporary property management cases -- known as receiverships -- over a six-year period were assigned randomly to one of three Suffolk commercial division judges, Thomas Whelan.

In addition, court records show, the computer matched Whelan with one politically connected law firm, Jaspan Schlesinger, in six cases in which the judge named a receiver.

And here, presumably, is where the computer's random-assignment work ended.

What, then, would explain what came next in the four big property management cases, where some $762,000 of $1.4 million in fees generated between 2008 and 2013 ended up with Melius and five associates -- his daughter, former son-in-law, his attorney, a close friend and a Huntington Town council member whose largest individual contributor is Melius?

There was no comparable pattern of repeat appointments in Newsday's review. Nor did assignments go to any other comparable interconnected group.

SEE PHOTOSThe Insiders investigation: Key players

As for Whelan, 79 percent of all the fees he has awarded since 2008 went to the Melius network.

In short, no one did as well as Melius and his associates with the receivership system.

Or with a single judge.

Why did a Melius employee at Oheka Castle in Huntington handle the day-to-day job of managing properties, as Newsday has reported -- rather than the managers appointed by Whelan?

Why did Whelan and another Supreme Court justice, Emily Pines, violate court rules by failing to report appointments and fees awarded to the Melius group?

Why did Whelan repeatedly involve Melius or his associates in cases before the court, sometimes giving them appointments over candidates preferred by litigants? And did Whelan know that subcontractors on some projects included firms controlled by Melius?

And what about political and personal connections? Whelan, in 2000, was elected as an Independence Party candidate. The party's chairman, Frank Mac-Kay, works for Melius, who owns Oheka.

Coincidence?

Or is it "a blatant example of political and judicial corruption and cronyism," as Bennett Gershman, a Pace University Law professor who has written on judicial ethics and investigated judges as a prosector, called Newsday's findings.

The job of unraveling the ties now rests with state and federal investigators probing the nexus of politics, power and money on Long Island.

The U.S. attorney's office, sources have told Newsday, is looking into allegations of political corruption on Long Island, how judges are selected in Suffolk and Melius, who survived a shooting on Feb. 24 by an assailant still at large.

The investigations, all of them, are essential to restoring faith in a system that's supposed to dispense justice by design -- rather than randomly.