Straw donors for Mayor Adams’ 2021 mayoral run revealed in Manhattan DA records

The names of dozens of alleged straw donors and a staffer for Mayor Adams became public Wednesday as part of the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against six people accused of concocting a straw donor scheme to benefit Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign in the hope that it would result in political favors.

In a court filing obtained by the Daily News on Wednesday afternoon, prosecutors revealed that Rachel Atcheson is the person identified in his recent indictment as “Campaign-Representative-1.”

Atcheson, who now serves as Adams’ deputy director of food policy, had contact in August 2020 with Dwayne Montgomery, a former NYPD inspector who served as the ringleader in the alleged scheme, according to the indictment.

According to the DA’s office, Montgomery emailed Atcheson with the receipt of a contribution made by Straw Donor-9, who was identified Wednesday as Nneka Jeffers, a student from Rosedale in Queens.

That same month, Atcheson, Montgomery and Carl Parker, who is identified in the indictment as “unindicted co-conspirator 1,″ organized a fundraiser event for the campaign.

Neither Atcheson, who declined to comment Wednesday, or Mayor Adams have been charged with any wrongdoing as part of the DA’s probe.

“The campaign will continue to work with the District Attorney’s office, Campaign Finance Board and any relevant authorities as the prosecution of these individuals proceeds,” Adams’ 2021 campaign spokesman Evan Thies said Wednesday evening.

The Manhattan DA’s declined to comment.

Officials from both Adams’ campaign and inside his administration revealed recently that Adams and Montgomery have been “friendly” for years and that they first became acquainted about 20 years ago when both served in the NYPD.

Montgomery began donating to Adams as early as 2005 when he gave to his state senate run. He also has a connection to Adams’ deputy mayor for public safety Phil Banks, who bought the Overwatch Services security firm from Montgomery around 2015.

In a previously unknown wrinkle, Montgomery has yet another connection to a prominent member of Adams’ administration: Tim Pearson.

Pearson, the mayor’s public safety adviser who served in the NYPD, too, is quoted in a Feb. 3, 2009 Daily News article as having a few weeks earlier organized a trip to Washington, D.C., with Montgomery and a few dozen other city police officers for then-President Barack Obama’s first inauguration.

Reflecting on returning to the city after the inauguration trip, Montgomery said he was inspired by Obama to use his role as a police officer to help young New Yorkers avoid running into trouble with the law.

The document released by the Manhattan DA on Wednesday includes a list of 35 straw donors and five unindicted co-conspirators. None of them have been charged with a crime. A handful of the straw donors are related to Montgomery and share the same surname. Others worked for EcoSafety Consultants, a firm that’s at the center of Bragg’s indictment.

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As first reported by The News, the Adams administration blacklisted the firm from doing any more business with municipal entities in light of the indictment.

Among those straw donors who have not yet been publicly revealed are Richard Wheeler, Albert Stafford and Derek Adams. It was not clear as of Wednesday evening whether or not Derek Adams is related to the mayor.

Micah and Melissa Dooley, a father and daughter from East New York, are among the 35 people who were used as straw donors, according to the DA filing.

In a phone interview Wednesday, the Dooleys said they have no idea who any of the defendants are and were shocked to learn their names got used for allegedly illegal purposes.

“I am just taken aback,” Melissa Dooley, a former TSA agent, said. “This is all news to me.”

The unindicted co-conspirators revealed on Wednesday include Parker, Kamaljit Singh, Bhupinder Singh, Antonio Morales and Rajwanth Gupati. Kamaljit Singh, who’s listed in the indictment as unindicted co-conspirator 2, was the subject of a December 2020 email between Montgomery and another defendant, Shamsuddin Riza, in which Montgomery allegedly invited Singh to a meeting with Adams.

The court filing released Wednesday also showed that the DA’s office has taken statements from more than a dozen witnesses, including several people identified in the Indictment as straw donors.