NY State Inspector General Investigation Reports Former RIOC President And Communications Director Misused State Funds

The story of the investigation begins as reported in this November 26, 2023 headline.

Shortly after his June 2023 appointment, now former Roosevelt Island Operating Corp (RIOC) Board Director Ben Fhala began to look into a RIOC contract with First Page Management a/k/a Status Labs, an online reputation management firm. The contracted services with Status Labs appeared to be for the personal benefit of then RIOC President Shelton Haynes and Communications Director Akeem Jamal.

According to a January 12, 2024, message sent by Mr Fhala to local Roosevelt Island media:

… During the last public board meeting, I inquired about the $170k contract with First Page Management, specifically questioning whether its main focus was to hinder or diminish the reach of articles about @Haynes, Shelton J (RIOC) and @Jamal, Akeem (RIOC) published by Roosevelt Island media outlets, specifically Roosevelt Island Daily and Roosevelt Islander Online…. 

Mr Fhala’s inquiries resulted in the NY State Inspector General‘s (IG) investigation and this April 3, 2025 IG press release concluding:

Former executive staff members of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC) improperly used state funds to procure and employ online reputation management services to further their own online reputations, and suppress negative information, implicating provisions of the New York Public Officers Law Code of Ethics.

These, and additional findings, were detailed in a report released today by New York State Inspector General Lucy Lang, who outlined the methods used by the RIOC executive team to manipulate search engine results, including flooding the internet with paid-for positive pieces to drown out negative coverage, in stark contrast to the State’s public policy goals of transparent government….

… More specifically, the Inspector General’s investigation revealed that members of RIOC’s executive staff, including then-President Shelton Haynes, and then- Assistant Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, Akeem Jamal, offended by what they perceived to be unfair public criticisms of their performance being published online, engaged a digital reputation management firm.  This effort, overseen by Jamal, resulted in a $168,680 contract with Status Labs for search engine optimization (SEO) and online reputation management (ORM), an amount that fell just below the threshold requiring RIOC board approval.

Purportedly designed to enhance the public image of RIOC, the Inspector General’s investigation found that any such efforts were secondary to the true purpose of Status Labs’ engagement – to suppress negative press about Haynes, Jamal and other RIOC executive staff members through artificial reputation management tactics and search engine result manipulation.  Strikingly, during the pendency of the engagement, Status Labs’ success was measured by analyzing the positive search results returned on searches for certain executive staff names, as opposed to RIOC as an organization, and its progress reports focused on the search engine performance of local blogs considered hostile to Haynes and his team.

The Inspector General also determined that Jamal’s management of the Status Labs contract posed a conflict, due to his personal interest in the suppression of negative articles about himself, many of which involved matters that predated and were unrelated to his employment with RIOC.  Additionally, while the other members of RIOC executive staff were not tasked with managing the contract, they were involved in reviewing draft articles about themselves and participating in interviews with Status Labs staffers who were creating artificial positive articles….

According to Page 3 of the IG Report:

… FINDINGS OF FACT

RIOC AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH LOCAL BLOGS
… In recent years, RIOC has been the subject of negative press, with especially voluminous and consistent coverage stemming from two local blogs: the Roosevelt Island Daily News and the Roosevelt Islander. These blogs feature extensive, regular coverage of RIOC, its board, and its executive staff. Much of this coverage criticizes RIOC’s management and operations and specifically alleges Haynes is incompetent and unqualified. According to current and former RIOC employees, this negative coverage—and especially these local blogs— adversely affected Haynes, the rest of the executive team, and RIOC employees. These employees described Haynes to the Inspector General as fixated on his public image and the amount of negative press that he and his colleagues received….

And footnote 7 Page 3:

… The Roosevelt Island Daily News is the source for the vast majority of the negative coverage regarding Haynes and RIOC. Notably, the blog is the product of a single writer….

Here’s the full IG report:

On April 3, 2025 I asked Milt Williams, attorney for Shelton Haynes:

The NY State Inspector General issued a report today detailing improper use of RIOC funds by former President/CEO Shelton Haynes and Communications Director Akeem Jamal to suppress negative press, enhance their own reputation and engage in search engine manipulation efforts to harm local Roosevelt Island media….

Does Mr Haynes have any comment on the Inspector General’s report…

Mr Williams replied:

The Inspector General’s (IG) Investigation did not include any interview of Shelton Haynes or Gretchen Robinson–even though they had been interviewed for all other IG investigations (all of which resulted in their exoneration), dating back to 2021. 

The IG’s office also apparently failed to review counter evidence contradicting their findings. The selective evidence cited in the IG report resulted in several inaccuracies that fail to depict the entire story. We intend to submit a letter to the IG highlighting the various inaccuracies.

The IG report ignores or marginalizes the relevant background and context for the retention of Status Labs–including, among other things: (1) that it was necessary to counter the negative impacts on RIOC and its staff created by the onslaught of biased and unfavorable press; (2) that the Status Labs contract was entered into after a public procurement process based on responses to a public Request for Proposals; (3) that members of RIOC’s Board, as well as RIOC’s comptroller, director of procurement, IT director, and legal staff were all aware of and/or involved in the procurement process; (4) that several of RIOC’s Board members were supportive of the effort to counterbalance negative impacts of the biased and unfavorable press; and (5) that the Battery Park City Authority — RIOC’s sister agency for Battery Park City—had entered into a similar contract with a similar media firm that performed similar work, and no questions were raised about the propriety of that contract.” 

In 2022, Shelton Haynes, CEO/President of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC), and his counterpart at Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) discussed the advantages of outsourcing media services. With RIOC lacking a communications team since spring 2022, they modeled their late-summer media services Request for Proposal (RFP) after the RFP that BPCA issued in 2021. In spring 2023, BPCA’s president praised RIOC’s improved media content and recommended Risa Heller as a vendor, suggesting RIOC consider outsourcing further upon the conclusion of their one-year agreement with Status Labs.

RIOC declined to comment on the IG report citing a pending litigation with Mr Haynes.

Mr Fhala declined to comment through his attorneys at the Proskauer law firm:

We write to you as legal counsel for Ben Fhala. We respectfully request that you please direct any media inquiries for Mr. Fhala to …

We refer you to Mr. Fhala’s letter of resignation dated September 22, 2024, and note that our client will not be making further statements at this time. We appreciate your time and cooperation with this request.

The NY Post covered the Roosevelt Island IG report today though their story is misleading in that the IG report has nothing to do with any campaign to blame tourists for problems with the Roosevelt Island Tram. According to the NY Post:

… Roosevelt Island officials launched a smear campaign to blame tourists — and not mismanagement — for repeated problems with the island’s famed Tramway, a scathing state report reveals….

Crains NY covered the story too.

On a happier note, here’s IG Lucy Lang on a January 5, 2025 ride on the Roosevelt Island Tram to visit the FDR Four Freedoms Park