Sam E. Antar exposes a $231,000 Davis Polk payment to William Hochul’s firm 37 days after an expired NY AG contract, amid Letitia James’ federal fraud probe over inflated property claims—like a $500K-mortgaged Virginia home falsely valued at $100K–$150K. Antar ties the Hochuls’ legal shield to taxpayer-funded corruption, citing U.S. Code 1014 violations and James’ hidden mortgages, while Roger Stone adds sexual misconduct cover-up allegations by her former staff. The episode demands accountability for systemic fraud in NY’s highest offices. [Automatically generated summary]
Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
Welcome back.
I'm Roger Stone, and we're back in the Stone Zone.
Joining me now is Sam E. Antar.
He's a former certified public accountant whose career trajectory took a remarkable turn from perpetrator to investigator of financial fraud.
See, Sam was the former chief financial officer of Crazy Eddie.
Remember them?
A major consumer electronics chain in the northeastern United States during the 1980s.
Sam was one of the key figures in the decade's, one of the decades, largest security fraud schemes.
But Sam Antar paid his debt to society, and following his criminal conviction after paying the price, he redirected his expertise towards forensic accounting, leveraging his first-hand knowledge of financial fraud to help combat white-collar fraud.
His unique perspective and technical expertise have made him an expert advisor to various clients, including law firms, government agencies, law enforcement departments, independent investment research firms, hedge funds, and others.
His website, whitecollarfraud.com, is a must-see.
Joining me now in the Stone Zone, none other than Sam Antar.
Sam, welcome into the show.
Howie?
How are you, Roger?
Thank you for having me on.
I'm delighted to have you because, well, you always break big news and you have new big news.
A story you have just broken on your website essentially outlines the fact that Governor Kathy Hochul's husband's law firm, Davis Polk, had a $325,000 dormant contract with the Attorney General's office.
It had been dormant for 14 months, zero dollars paid, nothing moved.
Then suddenly, in January, after Hochl's husband joined the firm, even after the contract had expired, or should I say 401 days after it began and 37 days after it was expired, they suddenly got a $231,000 payment.
Now, coincidentally, this appears to have happened contiguous with the Guardian reporting that a federal grand jury is now investigating Attorney General Letitia James for serial mortgage fraud.
So the same day the Hochul budget passed, including a $10 million taxpayer-funded legal shield for state officials under federal investigation.
Like with all your reports, Sam, this isn't speculation.
It's all documented right there at whitecollarfraud.com.
So lay the story out for us, Sam.
Okay, first of all, it's really a story about a financial triangle between Hochul and her husband and Letitia James in the law firm.
So let's start out from the very beginning.
Let's go back to February 1st, 2023.
Davis Polk signs a contract for $325,000 with the New York Attorney General's Office.
Now, they've been doing business with other agencies.
And in fact, from 2001 to 2024, they received $7 million from other New York City government agencies.
But what makes this interesting is that this contract that they signed just lay dormant.
And not only that, it was filed and approved over 400 days after the contract began.
So it didn't exist on paper, at least on our paper.
In other words, it wasn't visible.
So February 1st, the contract begins.
There are no payments for 14 months.
Exactly 11 months later, William Hochul, Kathy Hochul's husband, joins Davis Polk.
He gets $950,000 in 2024, and his employment starts on January 2nd, 2024.
On January 31st, 2024, the contract with Davis Polk expired.
No money, no visible authority for continued payments.
It just goes off the radar.
Then on March 8th, the expired contract is filed and approved 37 days after it expired, which is about 400 days after the contract was initiated.
What the hell is going on there?
Then on April 30th, 2024, the contract is bullied.
I'm sorry, between March and April 2024, the contract is extended because William Hochle is now part of the firm.
And on April 30th, 2004, William Hochul's firm gets their first payment, $231,644 payable to Davis Polk, his law firm.
Okay?
Then, okay, let's fast forward.
Now they're starting to get payments as soon as William Hochul joins.
Now let's fast forward it.
March 8th, 2025, the Guardian reports as a grand jury impaneled in Virginia.
Other outlets report that there's an FBI investigation out of New York.
And on that same day, Hochul goes and provides her with a $10 million defense fund.
Now, $400,000, $483,000 was paid to Hochul's law firm From the New York Attorney General's office, Tish James' office, before that happened, okay?
And it only happened after Hochul's husband joined the firm.
So what you have here is a financial quid pro quo, a protection network, a triangle protection network between Hochul, Tish James, and the husband's law firm.
So, Sam, let me ask what I think should be an obvious question.
The allegations against Attorney General Letitia James, which today are just allegations, serious allegations, documented allegations, but the allegations all invive her private conduct as a citizen.
They involved her personal mortgages and what appears to me to be a 22-year record of serial mortgage fraud.
Why should the New York taxpayers pick up the tab for her legal defense?
These are not investigations into her official actions as Attorney General, but investigations into her personal conduct.
Why should taxpayers be picking up the tab?
I agree with you.
That's exactly right.
I could understand if she's sued as part of her job, as part of her duties as the Attorney General.
But this mortgage fraud predates her duties as an attorney general and still has nothing to do with it as it occurred when she was attorney general.
Not only that, but this mortgage fraud predates when Trump became a Republican.
He was a Democrat at the time.
So you can't argue that.
Trump didn't put pencil to paper.
MAGA didn't put pencil to paper.
You didn't put pencil to paper.
Me, a Democrat, I didn't put pencil to paper.
All we did was look at her documents and it reveals a fraud.
And on top of that, you got New York State taxpayers footing the bill for something that doesn't have to do with her job.
And the coincidence is that $10 million comes after Hochul's husband's law firm receives $483,000.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
You know, Sam.
I wasn't born yesterday.
It smells.
Go ahead, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to cut you off.
Sam, the thing that's interesting here, of course, is that Letitia James' defense on all these matters is that this is retribution or revenge by Donald Trump.
As I recall, you are not only not a Republican, you're not a Trump supporter.
No, I don't even like it.
I don't even, personally, I don't even like him.
There you go.
So this idea that you are somehow an agent for the revenge of Donald Trump is pretty laughable.
Interestingly enough, the Federal Housing Finance Administration, which has specific authority to regulate mortgages and to search for mortgage fraud, reviewed all of the allegations that you first raised publicly and after their lawyers reviewed them, sent a formal letter over to the Department of Justice,
which is essentially a referral for criminal action.
Now, some have argued that although it is undisputed that the Attorney General, Letitia James, lied on these sworn forms, signing 12 different places, by the way.
So saying it was a typo is not going to fly, saying, when she applied for a mortgage in Brooklyn, that she, pardon me, in Virginia, that she and her daughter would inhabit the home in which they were borrowing to get a mortgage, when obviously she cannot be a resident of Virginia and still legally serve as the Attorney General of the State of New York.
But some people have said, well, she may have lied, but since there was no advantage to her, there is no crime.
How would you address that?
U.S. Code, I think it's 1014.
I might have gotten the last two numbers wrong.
But under the U.S. Code and also under Supreme Court cases, you don't even have to prove that the lender relied upon it or used it.
All you have to show that there was an intent to influence the lender, which is squarely there.
Okay?
Another thing is, even if the, so therefore, if the lender does not even use the information or rely on it, a federal crime was committed when she signed that document and turned it over to the mortgage company.
And that document, which I don't think she counted on being recorded, was recorded with the mortgage.
It's a public record.
So I don't buy that standard.
Well, no harm, no foul.
That BS.
First of all, we all know if there was any harm or foul.
Second of all, even if there was no harm or foul, she committed a federal crime by lying on that document.
Now, it's not just that one-off thing, okay?
You're talking about a history of false financial disclosures.
It's not like, oh, I made one mistake.
Okay, I get it.
Sometimes people make mistakes, okay?
But this is not a mistake, okay?
This was witnessed by two people in her office.
This is the Attorney General of the state of New York signing a sworn document.
False Financial Disclosures Revealed00:07:33
And it says in caps that she intended to make it her primary residence.
And this was done about 30 or 40 days before the Trump trial.
The ultimate hypocrisy.
Well, plus, in many cases, she borrows substantially more in mortgages than the value of the property.
So is she not inflating the value of her assets, exactly what, ironically, she accused Donald Trump of doing in a bogus case in New York under a law in which no one prosecuted?
Okay, I'm sorry, Dr. It's entirely possible.
Let me explain.
She has another property in Virginia on Poroney Avenue.
Okay.
She states that the value is between $100,000 to $150,000.
That's her, not me, not you, not anybody else, her.
Now, she has a $108,000 mortgage that wasn't disclosed in her financial disclosures.
So now we have $108,000.
Let's leave out the question of why she omitted it from her financial disclosures.
Then there are two other mortgages that are in her financial disclosures, but are not in the property record.
You want to call them phantom mortgages, unrecorded mortgages, et cetera.
When you add up the two phantom mortgages and the mortgage that she didn't show in the financial disclosures, it comes out to roughly $500,000 on the property that she claims was worth between $100,000 to $150,000.
That in of itself is a lie, male fraud, with the New York, with her filings with New York State.
Secondary, did she file, when she applied for the mortgage, did she have an appraisal that differed from the amount that she told New York State?
Then you got another possible crime being committed.
So what's going on is that the feds have to gather all of this evidence, piece it together, and present the case.
Now, I believe they have a case already.
I believe that they should have indicted already, but I understand that white-collar cases take time.
But I'm telling you now, and I'm telling the feds if they're listening, I'm watching.
And if you F up this case, you're going to be held accountable.
Well, there is no question that other people have been prosecuted for the exact same thing.
And I think it was Letitia James who said no one is above the law.
Another story broke two days ago at Art Voice, an upstate newspaper, that claims that a woman named Angel Du Bois claims that Letitia James covered up a sexual harassment and in fact a sexual assault against her by James chief of that staff, Ibrahim Khan.
There's already another lawsuit by another woman who worked in that office claiming the same thing.
So I think you're going to hear a lot more about both of those stories.
If you're just tuning in, this is the Stone Zone.
I'm Roger Stone.
We're talking to Sam Antar, and we're breaking news right here in the zone.
So whatever you do, please don't touch that dial.
The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And we're back with one of the most interesting guests I've ever had.
Sam Antar was a certified public accountant who was later convicted in one of the largest security fraud schemes in American history, the Crazy Eddy scandal.
Remember them?
They were a major consumer electronics chain in the northeastern United States.
They were very hot in the 1980s until they crashed.
But Sam Antar was convicted, but paid his debt to society.
And upon finishing his sentence, redirected his expertise towards forensic accounting, leveraging his first-hand knowledge of criminal fraud to help combat white-collar fraud.
He's kind of made a specialty at looking at our political leaders, and there's plenty of fraud to find.
He broke an amazing story, as we just outlined, in which the law firm that Governor Hochul's husband belongs to suddenly got huge payments concurrent with a federal investigation announced into Attorney General Letitia James and a $10 million taxpayer-funded bailout,
I should say, to pay for Letitia James' legal defense, even though the investigation is not into James' official duties or any act she took as Attorney General, but her personal conduct.
Sam, here's my question.
New York State law is pretty tight when it comes to disclosure.
We've got about two and a half minutes left here, a little less.
Isn't Letitia James required to disclose all of these things to the state of New York, and how has she done on that score?
Well, on her property, she's made numerous significant omissions.
For example, on her Brooklyn property, there is a mortgage that she lists on her on the financial statement.
It cannot be found in the property records.
There are mortgages that are in the property records, but cannot be found in her disclosures.
And this goes on and on and on with the other properties that she's listed.
The Peroni Adview thing that we just spoke about, $500,000 in loan, $100,000 to $150,000 stated value.
One mortgage there is not listed that she had on the property, and two other mortgages can't be found in the property disclosures, those phantom mortgages.
On the other property, the Sterling Street property is completely absent from our financial disclosures to New York State.
So what you have here is not just mortgage fraud.
You have here is a lady that's just a serial liar.
Whatever she puts pen to paper, none of the information can be trusted because significant omissions, significant gaps that needs to be looked at with somebody with subpoena power that I don't have.
All right.
We have to leave it there.
I want to reiterate our invitation to Attorney General Letitia James.
You're welcome to come into the Stone Zone at any time to make your case and defend yourself against any of these newsworthy allegations.
Let me thank my guest, Sam Antar, for joining us today in the Stone Zone.
Again, you can check out the documentation of everything he's reported by going to whitecollarfraud.com.
That's whitecollarfraud.com.
Until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.
We'll see you back in the Stone Zone then.
Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
You can hear the Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
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So you never have to wonder what the heck is going on here.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress: protect patient care to keep America strong.