Former Inspector Who Faked Safety Tests Is Sentenced

A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced an ailing former safety inspector to more than five years in prison for faking hundreds of asbestos and lead test reports, saying that his crimes were monumental and had put New York City’s residents at risk.

John Marshall Mantel for The New York Times

The case against the inspector, Saverio F. Todaro, who pleaded guilty in March to mail fraud, environmental crimes and making false statements, and the breadth and simplicity of his offenses revealed the city’s system of oversight and enforcement as strained at best and raised questions about whether such improper conduct was more widespread.

Mr. Todaro never performed hundreds of tests but filed false reports and failed to submit laboratory reports in some instances.

At the sentencing in United States District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Todaro, a wizened 68-year-old, sat hunched over in a wheelchair, breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank and sometimes holding his hand to his head as his lawyer argued for a sentence of home detention.

The lawyer, Steven M. Statsinger, acknowledged that his client’s crimes had been “unusually severe,” because they occurred over a long period of time — more than seven years — and had the potential to affect so many people. But he cited his severe health problems and his mentally retarded 40-year-old son; Mr. Todaro, he said, had a very close relationship with his son and helped care for him.

But the judge, Kimba M. Wood, told Mr. Todaro before she sentenced him that only his son’s needs and his own poor health kept her from giving him a “much, much higher” sentence. The prison term she meted out, five years and three months, was at the top of the range of advisory guidelines.

She also said he had concocted an elaborate web of lies to evade detection and avoid prosecution.

“The inventiveness of your lies,” she said, “was outstripped only by the callousness with which you put the health and lives of New York City children and adults at risk.”

Judge Wood ordered Mr. Todaro, a certified asbestos investigator, to pay more than $450,000 in forfeiture, fines and restitution.

In a brief and somewhat disjointed statement, Mr. Todaro apologized and asked the judge not to send him to prison.

“Basically, look, I’m sorry what I did,” he said. “I’m sorry the effect it’s had on my family, my relatives, clients, everybody. I feel really bad about it. And it’s been on my mind.

“I am sympathetic to everything I’ve done, the people I hurt, but if I go to jail my wife cannot keep the house up, my kid wouldn’t be taken care of. And what else can I say?”

The prosecutor in the case said in court papers that in all but a few instances, it was impossible to say whether the fake reports masked real environmental hazards. “It is unknown whether people will get sick as a result of his conduct,” wrote Anne C. Ryan, an assistant in the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan. “Among other things, asbestos-related diseases can take decades to develop.”........

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