Eric Adams aide under FBI investigation was key player at fundraiser with reported ‘straw’ donations

Revealed: Video footage casts doubt on compliance with campaign finance laws and past characterizations of the event by the Adams campaign

Winnie Greco, a longtime Eric Adams aide now under FBI investigation, was a key player at a secretive fundraiser that netted the future New York mayor what appears to be illegal campaign cash, according to interviews with purported donors to the event and video footage unearthed by the Guardian and the City.

The City and the news site Documented previously reported on several suspicious donations stemming from the fundraiser, which was hosted in August of 2021 at the home of a Queens mall operator. One listed donor to the fundraiser, a low-wage employee at that mall, admitted to being reimbursed in cash after donating to Adams at the behest of their employer – an act that would constitute an illegal “straw” donation. Three other purported donors denied giving to Adams, including a woman who was listed in the campaign’s financial disclosures as a “deliveryman” at a restaurant in the mall that she never worked for and that doesn’t do delivery.

At the time of the original reporting, the role of Greco at the mall operator’s event was not publicly known. The newly unearthed footage shows the aide escorting Adams in and out of the event, stage-managing photo ops for the candidate, and hugging and laughing with family members of the evening’s host, Lian Wu Shao, the chairman of Queens’ New World Mall.