New York Construction Report staff writer
The president of a Queens-based construction company was sentenced Tuesday to four years in prison for defrauding New York City out of millions of dollars tied to contracts for homeless shelters, federal prosecutors said.
Liaquat Cheema, 65, of East Elmhurst, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lorna G. Schofield after pleading guilty last year to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced.
Cheema was president of AFL Construction Co. Inc., which was awarded roughly $12 million in public contracts to perform maintenance, landscaping, roofing and snow removal at city homeless shelters. From 2014 to 2017, prosecutors said, Cheema and others submitted fraudulent invoices and documents to the city to obtain payments for work that was never performed or inflated material costs.
The scheme also involved the unauthorized use of identities, including names and a Social Security number of individuals who did not actually work on the projects, authorities said.
Prosecutors said Cheema also improperly collected tens of thousands of dollars in Medicaid benefits by submitting false income information and using fraudulent employment letters, including one bearing the signature of a project manager who was already deceased.
“Liaquat Cheema stole millions of dollars in public funds intended to pay for maintenance at homeless shelters in New York City,” U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a statement. “This office has no tolerance for those who use public contracts intended to aid members of our society-in-need to fraudulently enrich themselves.”
In addition to the prison sentence, Cheema was ordered to serve two years of supervised release and pay more than $3.2 million in restitution and forfeiture.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General and the New York City Department of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy V. Capozzi handled the prosecution.
