Key player in Adams campaign straw donor scheme pleads guilty

Shamsuddin Riza pleaded guilty Thursday to helping orchestrate a straw donor scheme that prosecutors say pumped illegal cash into Mayor Adams’ 2021 campaign coffers with an aim to secure political favors.

Riza is the fourth defendant to plead guilty after being charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office with facilitating the straw donor scheme.

A construction company owner, Riza entered his plea during a Thursday morning court hearing in Manhattan to one felony count of attempted grand larceny in the third degree related to his efforts to use fraudulent donations to illegally secure public matching funds for Adams’ campaign.

The count is the most serious any of the defendants in the straw donor case have pleaded to so far; the three others copped to lower-level conspiracy charges.

Riza also pleaded guilty to one count of falsifying business records in a separate case unrelated to the straw donor scheme.

Prosecutors said Riza facilitated the donations in hopes it would put his firm, United Construction Brothers Services, in line for lucrative city contracts once Adams became mayor.

Neither the mayor nor his campaign are implicated in or accused of having known about the scheme.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Althea Drysdale told Riza in the hearing she expects to sentence him to three years of probation during a hearing next month. As part of his plea deal, he’s also prohibited from hosting fundraisers for any political candidates, deliver contributions to any candidates or engage in any other form of political fundraising for three years.

“You can have no association whatsoever with campaign in any way, shape or form, do you understand?” Drysdale asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” Riza replied.

After the hearing, Riza declined to answer questions.

According to their indictment, between at least August 2020 and November 2021, Riza and his five co-defendants reimbursed people for giving money to Adams’ campaign and donated themselves in the names of dozens of others who didn’t know their identities were being used for that purpose.

Both practices — known as straw donating — are illegal and can generate illicit public matching funds and violate caps on how much money an individual can donate, the indictment charged.

Riza’s plea comes as Adams’ 2021 campaign is facing a separate federal investigation into allegations that Turkey’s government funneled illegal straw donations into its coffers.

Dwayne Montgomery, an ex-NYPD inspector, Adams friend and alleged ringleader of the straw donor scheme prosecuted by Bragg, pleaded guilty to his role in February. He told Riza in an intercepted July 2021 phone call that “[Adams] said he doesn’t want to do anything if he doesn’t get 25 Gs,” according to court papers.

Riza was caught in intercepted communications instructing two of his other co-defendants, brothers Shahid and Yahya Mushtaq, how to use the names of employees of their construction safety firm as straw donors. He told them to use nonsequential money orders, which are difficult to trace, to make the illegal Adams campaign contributions, prosecutors say.

The Mushtaqs pleaded guilty to their roles in the scheme in October as part of a deal that required them to cooperate with prosecutors.

With Riza’s plea entered, only two cases prosecuted as part of the scheme remain open, against Ronald Peek and Millicent Redick.

In making the case that Riza and his co-defendants angled for city government business as part of their scheme, prosecutors pointed to an email Riza sent Montgomery in summer 2021 before a fundraiser for Adams.

In the message, Riza shared details about a Brooklyn construction project he was hoping his contractor firm could work on, according to court papers.

“Please show to him before Event,” Riza wrote to Montgomery about the project, a reference to Adams, the indictment says. “It will start when he’s in office.”