Jurors Find Ex-Officials Guilty in North Hempstead Building Department Trial

A jury has found an ex-Nassau County Legislator and the former head of the North Hempstead Community Development agency guilty of bribery charges and official misconduct.

Jurors in the courtroom at the in Mineola returned the verdicts concerning Roger Corbin and Neville Mullings, respectively Tuesday as part of the corruption trial surrounding the North Hempstead Building Department in a “pay-to-play” scheme related to a development in New Cassel.

Corbin was found guilty of receiving bribes and official misconduct but not guilty of falsifying business records and a second count of official misconduct. Mullings was found to be not guilty of defrauding the government, falsifying business records and two counts of official misconduct.

Counts of grand larceny leveled against former Nassau Legislator Patrick Williams were returned not guilty. Charges were dropped against former building commissioner David Wasserman in June.

The men were accused of collaborating to award a development project in New Cassel to builder Ranjan Batheja in exchange of bribery payments of $400,000. Batheja had detailing how the scheme would work. It was this meeting and Batheja’s testimony which helped to convict Mullings.

A 10-day break is scheduled to begin Thursday and Justice Alan Honorof instructed jurors to return verdicts on 12 counts before the break occurred so that if one or more jurors could not return, a mistrial on those counts could be avoided.