Companies co-founded by top Adams adviser Frank Carone sued by major NYC real estate firms for $1.1 million

Mayor Adams’ trusted City Hall fixer has some fixing to do for himself now that he’s out of the administration.

Two companies co-founded by Frank Carone, Adams’ recently departed chief of staff, are being sued by two of the city’s largest real estate firms for more than $1.1 million in unpaid rent and other expenses. One of the ventures has already been ordered by a judge to cough up more than $179,000, according to court records.

Though Carone says he is no longer involved with one of the companies, the lawsuits could put him and Adams in an awkward spot.

Dozens of executives at the two real estate firms, SL Green and Cushman & Wakefield, donated a combined $31,700 to Adams’ 2021 campaign and have chipped in another $7,800 to his 2025 reelection bid, according to public records.

And now that he’s no longer in City Hall, Carone is expected to lead Adams’ 2025 campaign.

SL Green and Cushman & Wakefield also appear to have recently done business with Adams’ administration, and several of those companies’ executives are listed in the city’s database of entities it does business with.

According to the city’s contract database, Cushman & Wakefield inked a construction contract in July with the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications for $3.69 million. The firm has several other active contracts issued this year and last, including one with the Department of Citywide Administrative Services worth $664,000.

The most recent contract between SL Green and the city appears to have expired in December, according to city contracting records. That contract, which was between SL Green and the City University Construction Fund, is listed as being worth $269,000.

SL Green is also among a handful of entities vying for a license to operate a casino in the city, and lobbying records show the company hired the Kasirer firm last year to lobby Mayor Adams’ office. The records do not list Carone personally as a target of Kasirer’s lobbying. When asked Wednesday if he had any communications with SL Green about its push for a casino in Times Square, Carone said there’d been none.

A spokesman for Adams added that Carone had no role in the city contracts with SL Green and Cushman & Wakefield.

“He did not issue or broker contracts with either of those companies,” the spokesman said.

One of the two companies that’s drawing legal heat is Financial Vision Group, a health insurance investment business co-founded by Carone, according to an incorporation document obtained by the Daily News.

SL Green, which bills itself as the city’s largest commercial landlord, claimed in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court last spring that Financial Vision had not paid rent or utilities since June 2020 on a 23rd floor office it rented in one of its buildings on Sixth Ave.

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Financial Vision’s Sept. 3, 2019, lease — which features Carone’s name on the signature page — was terminated because of the rent debt in March, just a few months after Carone became chief of staff, but the company refused to vacate the premises until June, according to SL Green’s suit.

Between the overstay and the past rent arrears, SL Green claims Financial Vision owes $727,682, plus interest and other fees.

When contacted Tuesday, Carone said he’s unaware of the SL Green lawsuit and that he and his family trust have “nothing to do” with Financial Vision.

When shown a copy of the SL Green lease with what appears to be his signature on it — a document that was submitted in court — he responded:

“Not me. … That’s not my handwriting.”

“I have never leased space from SL Green and if I did would pay the rent,” he wrote in a text message. “They are a class shop. My role in Financial Vision was pre-June 2021 to provide capital, full stop.”

Financial Vision has already lost a round in the SL Green lawsuit. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Louis Nock ruled in May 2022 that Financial Vision should pony up rent and related expenses for all the months it occupied the office after the lease was terminated. SL Green calculated that amount to be $179,828.

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SL Green filed a motion in November asking Nock to issue a default judgement against Financial Vision for the remaining amount. The motion was entered into the court docket at a Dec. 9 hearing with “no opposition” from Financial Vision, though Nock has yet to rule on it, records show.

Financial Vision has not offered any response to SL Green’s lawsuit or sent representatives to any court hearings — a fact Nock noted in his May decision as part of the reason he ruled against the company.

In a sworn affidavit, Neil Kessner, SL Green’s executive vice president, said Financial Vision had claimed it was entitled to a “rent abatement related to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Landlord disagrees with this position, since tenant is an ‘office’ tenant and operates as an investment firm,” Kessner wrote.

In another lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court, a separate entity with ties to Carone is being sued for allegedly failing to cough up more than $400,000 worth of commissions that Cushman & Wakefield claims it’s owed.

That civil suit, which Cushman & Wakefield filed on Aug. 1, alleges that Boca Partner Ventures II LLC stiffed the commercial real estate giant out of $400,613 under a “listing agreement” between the two companies for a property on Sheepshead Bay Road in Brooklyn.

Boca Partner’s articles of organization list Carone as its “organizer.”

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According to Carone, the Boca LLC is owned by a family trust that falls under a separate blind trust, which he created when he joined the Adams administration. On Aug. 5 — just four days after the complaint was filed and in the middle of Carone’s stint as chief of staff — a summons was served at his home address in Mill Basin in connection with the case, court records show.

Carone said that until The News reached out to him on Tuesday, he wasn’t aware of the summons or the Cushman & Wakefield lawsuit itself.

“They could have just placed [it] in [the] mail to that address and who knows what happened,” he said in a text.

The lawsuit claims Boca entered into an agreement with Cushman & Wakefield that stipulates that if it leased “any interest” in the Sheepshead Bay property, it would have to pay Cushman a commission.

The complaint goes on to claim that a lease with Synergy Fitness Brooklyn from October 2021 is subject to that commission agreement.

In a response to the lawsuit, Boca’s attorney Keith Singer of the Abrams Fensterman law firm doesn’t deny the existence of the agreement, but contends that Cushman Wakefield “played no part in securing the Synergy Lease, and therefore, is not entitled to any fees or compensation in connection therewith.”

The legal battle has not yet been resolved and appears poised to drag on through the middle of this year at least. An order issued by U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos states that all discovery in the case “shall be completed” by May 30.

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Singer did not respond to messages. An attorney representing Cushman & Wakefield in the lawsuit declined to comment, and SL Green’s office did not respond to emailed questions.

Carone — who was once a partner at Abrams Fensterman, the same law firm now representing Boca — has said he had no insight into any of his private business interest while in City Hall because of his blind trust.

Now that he’s out of office, though, Carone said the blind trust will end by the end of January, which could mean that he may be pulled into the affairs of some of the companies he once had ties to.

Financial Vision has also been linked to others with ties to Carone or the Adams administration.

As first reported by The News last year, the company, which advances cash to medical companies waiting on insurance payouts in exchange for a fee, took investment advice from Zhan and Robert Petrosyants, a pair of criminally convicted twin brothers who are close friends with Adams.

Carone and two other Financial Vision founding members, his former law partner Howard Fensterman and his son, Jordan Fensterman, were together given a 22.25% stake in the company when it launched in 2018, the incorporation document reviewed by The News shows. The trio was assigned that stake through a separate entity, FHJ Vision Partners, that’s also listed in the incorporation document.

The document states that one of the Financial Vision’s other stake-holding founding members is Daniel Kandhorov, a businessman who’s also friends with the mayor.

In November, Financial Vision sued Kandhorov, accusing him of providing faulty investment information that caused its investors to lose $12.4 million, as first reported by news outlet The City, which quoted Kandhorov as calling himself a “good friend” of the mayor.

Kandhorov — who in the early 2000s beat federal charges that he hired Russian mobsters to burn down a competitor’s business in Queens — told the outlet that Financial Vision’s allegations against him were “baseless.”