Terence Banks, a marketing consultant and former MTA official who’s wrapped up in a federal probe of a number of prime officers within the Adams administration, scrubbed his firm web site after the feds raided his residence final week — simply days after he was boasting about his political connections, The Put up has realized.
Banks — brother of Deputy Mayor for Public Security Phil Banks and Faculties Chancellor David Banks, each of whom the feds additionally focused — was gloating about his affect with the Adams administration proper as much as the time the feds knocked on his door, political insiders advised The Put up.
However within the days since, Banks has taken down the web site for his firm, The Pearl Alliance, which described itself as a “values-driven authorities and group relations agency” however provided little or no description of what it truly does.
By Sunday, the web site vanished — changed as a substitute by a website itemizing.
The corporate’s LinkedIn profile — which listed Banks as Pearl’s founder and CEO — was additionally eliminated, and the search hyperlink now results in an empty web page.
Banks has not been accused of a criminal offense. However the feds circled in on him and his brothers throughout a sweeping set of raids this week during which they confirmed up waving search warrants — and later seized their digital units.
Regulation enforcement sources say authorities did a radical search of Banks’ residence — extra so than different targets — and in addition subpoenaed his telephone.
Main the investigation are prosecutors from the Southern District of New York — who’re additionally probing Adams’ prime aides in one other, separate investigation launched final yr into the mayor’s 2021 marketing campaign donations, sources mentioned.
Banks labored for the Metropolitan Transit Authority for 25 years, based on his private LinkedIn web page.
He’s additionally a longtime board member of Queens Neighborhood Board 13, in addition to a member of One Hundred Black Males, a company of black enterprise house owners, politicos and group leaders, the web page mentioned.
He’s the legislature chair of the Convention of Minority Transportation Officers, it added.
That work suits in with the overall notion that Banks had for years been attempting to make political inroads simply earlier than his retirement — which he celebrated in March 2023 with a lavish social gathering at Jay-Z’s 40/40 membership at its previous location on West twenty fifth Road, sources mentioned.
The shindig was sponsored by The Pearl Alliance and featured hors d’oeuvres, a money bar, a two-drink minimal and bottle service.
“These guys are promoting entry,” one veteran lobbyist mentioned about Banks’ alleged wheeling and dealing. “That’s what respectable individuals within the enterprise are up towards.”
Banks — who just isn’t a registered lobbyist — has additionally been noticed coming and going from Police Commissioner Edward Caban’s workplace on greater than as soon as event, sources mentioned.
Caban’s residence was additionally raided as a part of the feds’ dragnet. However the function of his conferences with Banks stays unclear.
Nonetheless, a number of purchasers he purportedly represents had enterprise earlier than metropolis officers — together with the NYPD.
A kind of — Saferwatch, which makes an app that lets anybody ship textual content, video or audio tricks to police — obtained about $67,000 over the past yr from the NYPD for numerous technical help and college security work, based on town’s on-line data.
Others purchasers — reminiscent of Derive Applied sciences, an IT help firm; SVAM Worldwide, an IT service supplier; and Mercato, a grocery retailer supply app — had tens of millions of {dollars}’ price of contracts with town, on-line data mentioned.
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