Diana Boutross, a New York real estate broker, was able to sideline a competitor from a lucrative city government contract and secure the deal for herself as a “direct result” of her close relationship with Ingrid Lewis-Martin and Jesse Hamilton, two longtime aides to Mayor Adams, according to an updated lawsuit.
The revised lawsuit comes as Boutross, Hamilton and Lewis-Martin, who resigned as the mayor’s chief adviser in December, all remain under scrutiny from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
All three got their phones seized by DA investigators in September after returning from a trip to Japan, and Lewis-Martin was days after her resignation indicted on bribery and money laundering charges stemming from an alleged real estate scheme that appears unconnected to any dealings with Boutross and Hamilton.
DA prosecutors said in court last week they are pursuing other “ongoing investigations” touching on Lewis-Martin, and that other “targets” of those probes are connected to her.
The lawsuit in question was first filed last month by Boutross’ competitor, JRT Realty, against her firm, Cushman & Wakefield.
The suit claimed Hamilton, a top official at the city Department of Citywide Administrative Services, pressured Cushman & Wakefield to install Boutross as its main executive on a contract with Adams’ administration under which she’d broker commercial property deals between private landlords and city agencies in exchange for hefty commissions.
JRT, a subcontractor on the DCAS deal entitled to share in those commissions, charged in the original suit Cushman & Wakefield acquiesced to Hamilton’s demand and put Boutross in the post in late 2023, at which point she took allegedly illicit steps to block JRT from deals.
But an amended complaint submitted in Manhattan Supreme Court late Wednesday alleges Boutross couldn’t pull off those moves alone, but relied on her connections to Lewis-Martin and Hamilton to do so.
“[Boutross and her co-defendants] were able to do so only as a direct result of Boutross’s personal relationships with Hamilton and Lewis-Martin,” JRT wrote in the updated complaint, which now names Boutross as well as two colleagues as defendants, in addition to Cushman & Wakefield itself, accusing them of defamation, contract breaches, tortious business intereference and other civil counts.
Specifically, JRT claims Boutross had help from Lewis-Martin and Hamilton in securing “modifications” to the city’s Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprises rules that allowed Boutross to more easily block JRT from sharing in commissions. The firm, which is women-owned, alleges in the suit that city administrative and contract laws were violated in the process of those modifications being made.
Lewis-Martin, who has pleaded not guilty in her criminal case, isn’t named as a defendant in JRT’s suit, and neither is Hamilton.
Attorneys and reps for Lewis-Martin, Hamilton and Boutross didn’t immediately return requests for comment Thursday. In response to JRT’s original suit, attorneys for Cushman & Wakefield denied wrongdoing and filed a motion asking a judge to dismiss the accusations.
Also in the updated suit, JRT alleged Boutross hinted she had friends in high places when she spoke with JRT executives in mid-2023, before she was selected to take over the DCAS contract.
After the JRT executives explained to her the complexities of pulling off a DCAS brokering deal, Boutross, who allegedly had no prior government leasing experience, would respond, “Don’t worry. I have a rabbi,” according to the suit. The phrase is commonly used to denote a person with high-up connections that can make a difficult situation easy.
Around the same time of those talks, Hamilton had lunch with Boutross, her boss at Cushman & Wakefield and others, JRT alleges. In that lunch, Hamilton made clear to Boutross’ boss that she should be tapped to oversee the contract with DCAS, according to court papers.
“She is my broker,” Hamilton said in the meeting, pointing at Boutross, JRT alleges.
A spokeswoman for DCAS didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the amended JRT suit.
The lawsuit’s playing out as Lewis-Martin’s bribery case remains pending, with her lawyer and prosecutors meeting for a brief court hearing Thursday to discuss trial preparations. She has been indicted alongside her son, who allegedly received most of the bribes his mother accepted from two real estate developers in exchange for help with building permits.
Unlike Adams — whose federal corruption case is in the process of being at least temporarily dismissed by President Trump’s administration — Lewis-Martin was indicted by local prosecutors who have shown no sign of wanting to drop her case.