Frank Carone in September 2024.
Photo: Victor J. Blue/The New York Times/Redux
Early on Wednesday morning, as Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s allies celebrated a sweep in the Democratic primary, one of former mayor Eric Adams’s top allies was taken into custody. Multiple outlets are reporting that Frank Carone was arrested at his home in Manhattan by FBI agents. The attorney and lobbyist is reportedly set to be arraigned on bribery and fraud charges in federal court in Brooklyn later today.
According to the City Reporter, Carone was arrested in an alleged bribery scheme related to the construction of a migrant shelter. Carone’s brother, Anthony, who works as an attorney in his law firm, was also arrested.
Carone has not issued a statement yet. But after the New York Times reported on a federal corruption investigation involving him, he denied wrongdoing and said that anyone looking into his career was hampered by “stereotypical assumptions” about Italian Americans. “Anyone and everyone who actually knows me and has worked alongside me would say that I am conscientious and principled in how I comport myself and all that I do,” he added.
Carone, the former lead counsel for the Democratic Party in Brooklyn, served Adams in several roles. He was Adams’s first chief of staff as mayor, his campaign chair in his brief 2025 reelection bid, and his unofficial broker with the Trump administration for an ambassador position; Carone also helped Adams launch a disastrous crypto coin days after he left office in January. After leaving his formal position with Adams in 2022, Carone opened a lobbying firm to capitalize on his connections — though much of that work has dried up now that Adams is a civilian again, splitting his time between the U.S. and Albania.
