<p>NEW YORK — The former top executive of a New York City homeless housing group that is one of the city’s largest was arrested and charged Wednesday with conspiracy, honest services wire fraud and money laundering.</p>
<p>The charges against Victor Rivera were announced by U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss, who said Rivera accepted kickbacks and bribes for years.</p>
<p>“Victor Rivera sought to leverage his position as the CEO of a non-profit into a very much for-profit situation for himself,” she said in a release.</p>
<p>Prosecutors did not identify the agency, but The New York Times has reported that Rivera engaged in a decade-long pattern of sexual abuse and financial misdeeds while he was president and founder of the Bronx Parent Housing Network, one of the city’s largest homeless shelter networks.</p>
<p>His lawyer did not immediately return a message seeking comment.</p>
<p>Rivera, 61, of Stony Brook, was fired in February from his position. He pleaded not guilty to the charges Wednesday and was released on $100,000 bail after a hearing in which it was revealed that he was interested in cooperating.</p>
<p>Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for prosecutors, said Rivera’s bail package bans him from contacting the nonprofit’s employees or board members unless his attorney participates.</p>
<p>In court papers, prosecutors described a scam in which Rivera from at least 2013 until 2020 enriched himself and his relatives by soliciting and accepting bribes and kickbacks from contractors doing work for his agency.</p>
<p>They said Rivera made at least hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit gains while laundering some of the corrupt payments through intermediary entities he controlled, including a purported consulting company supposedly owned by a relative.</p>
<p>Margaret Garnett, commissioner of the New York City Department of Investigation, said Rivera “schemed to enrich himself and his relatives” when he should have used the city-funded nonprofit to serve the underprivileged, including the homeless.</p>
