But from this unlikely address, nearly $900,000 has flowed to the campaign accounts of powerful political players across the country.
It is hard to say where the big sums are coming from.
Neighbors describe the man who lives inside — James Robert Williams, 64 — as a reclusive figure who walks with a cane and orders Chinese food for many of his meals.
Yet Mr. Williams, who has few apparent assets and no obvious source of income, has become a major benefactor to political candidates and risen to V.I.P. status in New York Republican circles.
He was recently named by Edward F. Cox, the state Republican Party chairman, to serve on an advisory panel that featured party notables, including a former White House spokesman and a former New York secretary of state.
And he was honored in 2009 as “corporate citizen of the year” during an event at the Grand Hyatt New York in Midtown, where he shared the dais with Mitt Romney, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
But Mr. Williams, who contributed to more than 50 campaigns in the past five years, appears to be bipartisan. In addition to the $400,000 he and companies listed at his address gave to Republican state and county committees in New York, he contributed $50,000 to Andrew M. Cuomo’s campaign for governor, and $20,800 to another Democrat, Representative Charles B. Rangel.
Among the Republican lawmakers and groups who received contributions were Senator John McCain, $57,800, for his presidential run; the Republican National Committee, $31,250; and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, $10,000. The bulk of the money was given between 2008 and 2011.
“The guy is unbelievable,” said Joseph J. Savino, the Republican Party chairman in the Bronx, which received an $8,000 donation. “He’s great.”
Still, there is much that is mysterious about James Robert Williams, who also goes by J. R. Williams, Bob Williams and Robert Williams.
According to documents at the New York Department of State, Mr. Williams has formed at least 25 companies, most of them based at his apartment on 170th Street in Jamaica. But there is little evidence of their existing beyond incorporation papers, and most are now inactive.
Records also show he described himself as a lawyer, though the school he says he attended — Indiana University — has no record of it. The law firm he indicated he worked for says it never employed him.
And despite the donations he has showered on politicians of both parties, those who have received the contributions say they have little idea of how he makes his money.
The New York Times asked Republican Party officials how Mr. Williams was selected for appointment to the panel by Mr. Cox, known as the Chairman’s Advisory Council, and for the honor of corporate citizen.
The state party referred a reporter to a public relations representative for Mr. Williams. But the representative said he could not answer questions about Mr. Williams, or be of any assistance, because Mr. Williams had disappeared after learning of the reporter’s interest.
“Mr. Williams has become completely unreachable,” Andrew Moesel of Scheinkopf Ltd., the public relations firm, wrote in an e-mail. “If he ever does emerge and contact us, you will be the first to know.”
Becky Miller, a party spokeswoman, later sent an e-mail saying, “Bob Williams is one of several men and women from all walks of life and every corner of the state who provide support and guidance to the New York State Republican Committee.”
Before he vanished, Mr. Williams rebuffed a reporter who went to his apartment building and tried to ask him some basic biographical questions, like where he went to school. Mr. Williams said the questions were “more complicated” than they seemed and ended the conversation over a phone in the building’s lobby.
Federal investigators are now examining Mr. Williams’s activities, too, focusing on his role in a real estate proposal in which investors say they lost millions after he and a business partner offered to help them gain a foothold in the city’s affordable housing market.
“It would be inappropriate to make any substantive comment at this time for fear of compromising an ongoing investigation,” said Benjamin Brafman, a lawyer who is representing the investors, Peter Jacov and Av Glattman. “However, it is absolutely clear to us that when the dust settles in this case, Messieurs Glattman and Jacov will be viewed as having been victimized by a small group of powerful and fundamentally dishonest individuals.”
Officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.
But public records and interviews with family and associates suggest that the questions surrounding Mr. Williams may become more tangled.
Mr. Williams, those who know him say, can be quick to pick up a dinner check and has a driver ferry him around. In addition to the Chinese food deliveries, he sometimes has antipasto delivered to his door from an Italian restaurant in Mineola.
But he has few visible assets beyond his Cadillac, and this year alone, eight state tax liens were filed against his companies.
His biography, posted online, says he helped General Dynamics secure a $2.5 billion federal wire and cable service contract for minority-owned firms. Rob Doolittle, a General Dynamics spokesman, said he was unable to confirm that Mr. Williams played such a role.
One of nine children from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Mr. Williams attended the State University at Buffalo on scholarship, where he played basketball and planned to pursue teaching, according to team rosters from the period. He graduated in 1971, and years later, he informed his alma mater that he had a law degree from Indiana University and asked that his mail be sent to Williams & Lockner, a Minneapolis law firm.
Officials at the Indiana University system say they have no record of the attendance of Mr. Williams. A founding partner of the Minneapolis firm, Thomas P. Lockner, doubted that Mr. Williams had any legitimate tie to the firm. In January, when Mr. Cox, the Republican Party chairman, named Mr. Williams to the advisory council, the announcement referred to him as the president of First Pro Group. State records, however, note that First Pro was dissolved in July 2010.
The companies he controls, most of them in his apartment, have names that indicate interest in a range of things, like trucking, electrical supplies and construction, and the contributions are often drawn from them. But there is little evidence that any of the firms have created jobs for anyone besides Mr. Williams and a woman, Barbara Brunson, who also lives in Suite 5L.
In fact, the phone number listed in incorporation records for three of the companies is actually registered to his upstairs neighbor, Dutelle Achoute. In an interview, Ms. Achoute said she had no idea who Mr. Williams was and expressed surprise that her number was listed for the companies.
In the case that prompted complaints to the F.B.I., Mr. Glattman and Mr. Jacov, the real estate investors, told the authorities they were cheated of $6 million they had deposited in escrow accounts for investments by Mr. Williams and a partner, David Spiegelman, a New Jersey lawyer.
The investors contend that they had set aside the money in 2008 to bid on deals in the affordable housing sector and had been told by Mr. Spiegelman that their plans would benefit from Mr. Williams’s involvement because of his know-how and political connections.
The investors say they were then shown deeds, bank statements and other documents by Mr. Spiegelman and Mr. Williams to reassure them that the money from the escrow accounts was being used to bolster their effort to acquire city-controlled apartments and homes.
One official-looking document appeared to be signed by Chris Christie, in his former capacity as a United States attorney, and informed the investors that they would not have any criminal exposure as part of the deal.
The investors eventually realized that most of the documents were fakes — the Christie document, for example, was dated half a year after Mr. Christie, now New Jersey’s governor, left the federal prosecutor’s office. The investors severed ties to Mr. Spiegelman and Mr. Williams and then notified the F.B.I.
A Christie spokesman said he had no knowledge of the document or of the business deal.
Reached at his home, Mr. Spiegelman declined to discuss the matter. “The likelihood is, if I’m somehow involved, I’d obviously not want to say anything that would involve me further,” he said. Of Mr. Williams, he said, “He’s a very convincing individual when you talk to him.”
Inquiries to people connected to campaigns that received large checks yielded few insights into Mr. Williams. Several did not respond, including Mr. Cantor, who is the House majority leader; the Republican National Committee; and State Senate Republicans in Albany. But one government watchdog group called the pattern of donations extremely troubling. Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center, said, “In more than 15 years of investigating political corruption, I’ve never seen a more suspicious set of facts.”
One former city official who has spent time with Mr. Williams described him as a man who “seemed to know everybody” and was always brimming with ideas. One day he would talk about affordable housing in Harlem and the next day muse about development around a Brooklyn auto mall.
“He was one of those guys who had his hands in everything,” the former official said. “You never knew what was real. The next time he’d come, he’d tell you he had a time machine.”
Original Article
Source: ny times
Author: RAYMOND HERNANDEZ, ALISON LEIGH COWAN and JO CRAVEN McGINTY
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