Feds Charge Exodus Founder and Queens Hotel Operator With COVID Funds Corruption Scheme
Julio Medina, the founder of Exodus Transitional Community, allegedly received millions in kickbacks and bribes for steering business to firms run by Weihong Hu, a fundraiser for mayors Adams and de Blasio.
This article originally appeared in The City.
By Greg B. Smith, and Yoav Gonen
NEW YORK - A taxpayer-funded program to house incarcerated people released from Rikers in hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic became an elaborate fraud conspiracy in which the founder and former CEO of Exodus Transitional Community, Julio Medina, pocketed millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks, Brooklyn federal prosecutors charged Thursday.
Medina, Christopher Dantzler, the owner of an unlicensed security firm Exodus hired to provide security at the hotels, and Weihong Hu, owner of two hotels where Exodus placed the inmates when they were released from Rikers and upstate prisons, were charged with a wide variety of federal felonies.
Hu has raised thousands of campaign dollars for both former Mayor Bill de Blasio and his successor, Eric Adams. The Exodus inmate hotel program was awarded via a no-bid contract in an emergency housing program under de Blasio at the start of the pandemic and expanded by Adams, with more than $120 million in public funds steered to Exodus.
"Through kickbacks and bribes, the defendants...capitalized on the COVID-19 crisis and exploited the Emergency Housing Program by engaging in a corrupt scheme to line their own pockets with millions of dollars intended to protect the public," a 17-page indictment unsealed Thursday alleged.
Under Medina's direction, Exodus paid out $12 million in public funds to Hu's hotels and another $17 million to a construction firm that she repurposed to be a catering company that provided meals to the program participants, prosecutors state in their court filing.
In return Medina received millions in bribes and kickbacks from both Dantzler and Hu, including cash, help with Medina's home mortgage, financing on a $107,000 luxury vehicle, a townhouse in Washington Heights worth $1.3 million and a home upstate worth $750,000. The true ownership of the homes was concealed by co-conspirators, according to prosecutors.
THE CITY first reported on problems with Exodus' finances in 2022, highlighting how the original no-bid contract amount had skyrocketed and flagging that one of the firms providing security at Hu's hotel in Fresh Meadows, Queens, did not have a license.
After THE CITY's reporting, Medina resigned as a member of the Board of Correction, the oversight committee that monitors Rikers Island.
THE CITY later exposed that millions of taxpayer dollars that could not be accounted for had been steered by Exodus into a secret subcontractor run by Dantzler that the city did not know existed.
The indictment highlights instances of alleged bribery that appeared to be particularly brazen, including a series of security camera video stills showing hotel owner Hu removing a bundle of cash from her wallet, placing it an envelope and handing it to Medina — a day after Exodus cut two checks worth a total of $187,600 for a Hu-associated catering business.
Hu owns three hotels in Queens — one in Fresh Meadows and two across the street from each other in Long Island City — that have had subcontracts with the city government to house formerly incarcerated individuals or migrants. She is also building two large hotels in midtown Manhattan.
The hotel in Fresh Meadows, a former Wyndham Garden, was raided by the feds in November.
It’s the site where Hu held at least two fundraisers on Adams’ behalf in 2021, one of them in September of that year at which Medina dined on lobster at a table of 12 alongside Hu and Adams. Exodus was operating its program at the hotel at the time, as well as at one in Long Island City.
Hu’s contracts with the city, which started under de Blasio and expanded under Adams, have brought her hotels about $16 million annually, contract documents show.
Hu hosted a third fundraiser for Adams in June 2023 at a Hudson Yards luxury building where she had recently purchased an apartment for $5 million in cash. The event raised more than $44,000 according to filings the Adams’ campaign submitted only recently to the city’s Campaign Finance Board.
Two people who donated $2,000 each to Adams’ campaign in connection with that fundraiser told THE CITY that they, and in one case, also a spouse, were reimbursed by Hu’s family members for their donations, which is illegal.
At the same time, Hu’s Manhattan development projects both benefited from actions taken by the Adams administration in 2022.
A project at 58 W. 39th St. had a stop work order reversed by the Department of Buildings within hours of being implemented by an inspector. That about-face happened around 11 p.m., shortly after the Rev. Al Cockfield II, a friend of Adams who ran a fundraising committee on his behalf, called top DOB officials urging them to allow construction to continue, according to a source familiar with buildings department operations.
Cockfield’s Queens home was raided by the FBI on the same day as the raid on Hu’s Fresh Meadows hotel
Hu’s project at 319 W. 35th St. was halted under the previous administration in March 2021, after her workers demolished affordable housing units that were protected by local zoning regulations. In November 2022, Adams’ DOB allowed Hu to resume the project without a plan to replace the lost units.
After THE CITY wrote about the situation in May 2024, the DOB once again stopped the project and, along with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, required Hu to restore affordable units at the site. The process is under negotiation with Community Board 4.
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