Hotels, Big Money and Late-Night Favors: A Guide to the Eastern District’s Adams Probe
With their unprecedented indictment of a sitting mayor, phone seizures and search warrants, the prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York have attracted a lot of attention for investigating Mayor Eric Adams and his inner circle.
But across the East River, federal prosecutors in the office of the Eastern District have been busy, too. A growing number of dramatic raids directed by that office have targeted some of the mayor’s biggest boosters, particularly when a Queens hotel owned by Adams fundraiser Weihong Hu and the home of Adams’ friend, the Rev. Al Cockfield II, were both raided by the FBI on Nov. 14.
While prosecutors are tight-lipped about those moves, the timing and location of the raids suggest they are taking a close look at a nexus of Adams associates who have been involved in a series of questionable activities exposed in joint reporting by THE CITY, The Guardian US and Documented over the past year.
The activities involve a host of suspect fundraising and influence peddling that, among other things, saw a hotel developer garner actions by City Hall that benefitted two of her major Midtown developments.
At least a half dozen people figure in the raids and related events. To help sort through the complexity, here’s a guide on the players involved:
Weihong Hu
Hu is a developer with five hotels — three in Queens and two under development in Manhattan — that all have business dealings with the city. She’s held multiple big-dollar fundraisers for both of Adams’ mayoral campaigns, in 2021 and now in 2025.
In 2021, she held two fundraisers for Adams at the former Wyndham Gardens hotel in Fresh Meadows. That location has now been raided by the FBI as part of the federal probe by the Eastern District.
Like her other hotels in Queens, the Fresh Meadows spot has city-funded contracts that collectively bring in over $16 million annually to her companies to shelter newly-arrived immigrants or people formerly incarcerated in New York. (Those contracts began under the prior administration but have been renewed or had the payments upped significantly by the current administration.)
Hu hosted a third fundraiser for Adams on June 8, 2023 at a Hudson Yards luxury building, where she also bought an apartment in recent years. Two people who donated $2,000 each to Adams’ campaign in connection with that fundraiser told THE CITY that they, and in one case, also a spouse, were reimbursed by Hu’s family members for their donations, which is illegal.
Hu’s Manhattan hotels are nearly done with complex development projects that benefitted from actions taken by the Adams administration in 2022.
A project at 58 W. 39th St. had a stop work order reversed by the DOB within hours of being implemented by an inspector. That about-face happened shortly after the Rev. Al Cockfield II (more on him below), a friend of Adams, called top DOB officials urging them to allow construction to continue, according to a source familiar with buildings department operations.
The other project, at 319 W. 35th St., was halted under the previous administration in March 2021 after workers demolished affordable housing units that were protected by local zoning regulations. In November 2022, Adams’ DOB allowed Hu to continue with the project, without a plan to replace the lost units.
After THE CITY wrote about the situation in May, the DOB once again stopped the project and, along with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, is now requiring Hu to restore up to 14 affordable units at the site in order for construction to proceed.
An attorney for Hu, Ben Brafman, previously told THE CITY that “she is not a target” of the federal investigation.
Rev. Al Cockfield II
Cockfield is a politically–connected pastor and friend of Adams who tried to help Hu on the stop work orders at both of the sites. Hu identified him as a “consultant” in internal meetings about her Manhattan hotel developments, according to one attendee.
According to a source, Cockfield called top DOB officials just hours after an inspector had stopped all work on the upper levels of the hotel, citing a safety concern with a hoist elevator. About an hour after the late-evening phone call, a DOB inspector reversed the stop-work order.
Cockfield also attended meetings with Hu’s architect and others on the stalled West 35th Street project, and said he’d make calls to city officials to help move the project along, the attendee previously told THE CITY.
Cockfield’s Queens home was raided by the FBI earlier this month. He didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment.
The pastor also has given fundraising help to Adams. In September 2021, he launched a political action committee that he said would support Adams’ agenda in Albany. The PAC has since come under scrutiny for its unusual spending, including $144,000 to Cockfield in wages and consulting fees, and $60,000 to a charter school he founded. After inquiries by the state’s Division of Election Law Enforcement, the school returned the funds.
John Sampson
Since early 2023, Sampson has been the president of the company that manages Hu’s hotels. He is also a longtime pal of Adams and former state senator.
The mayor and Sampson go way back to their time serving in Albany, around 2010. That year, both men were found to have committed ethical lapses during the awarding of a casino franchise at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, according to a report by the state Inspector General that also implicated other elected officials.
Sampson was expelled from the State Senate in 2015 after a jury convicted him of trying to obstruct a probe investigating allegations that he embezzled more than $400,000 in his role as a court-appointed referee in foreclosure cases. He was sentenced to a five-year term in federal prison in 2017.
Sampson was released just in time to attend one of Hu’s fundraisers for Adams at her hotel in September 2021.
At the time, he worked for a nonprofit that provides services to the formerly incarcerated people who were sheltered at Hu’s, and other hotels, called Exodus Transitional Community. (Exodus went on to have its own problems, including multiple city and state investigations). Two months after the fundraiser, Sampson was spotted at Adams’ mayoral victory party in Brooklyn.
Sampson continued working for Exodus, while informally advising Hu, before she named him CEO in early 2023 of one of her hotel firms. According to a former city official familiar with the situation, Sampson committed to helping Hu score a migrant shelter contract for one of her two hotels in Long Island City. A month later, the hotel landed a $7.5 million contract with the Department of Homeless Services.
Winnie Greco
Greco is Adams’ longtime advisor on Asian affairs who resigned from City Hall seven months after FBI raids on her homes.
She had previously served as a volunteer for Adams at Brooklyn Borough Hall for eight years, shepherding him on multiple trips to China. She also launched a nonprofit to bring a Chinese friendship Archway to Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, and served as gatekeeper for Adams’ meetings with Chinese officials and with local community groups.
In 2018, she started organizing fundraisers for Adams mayoral campaign, also as a volunteer. More than a handful of those fundraisers were held at the New World Mall in Flushing, whose co-owner, Lian Wu Shao, also held a lavish fundraiser at his Long Island home for Adams in late 2021 that Greco attended.
THE CITY has previously identified multiple donors to Adams’ campaign connected to the fundraisers at Shao’s house or at the mall who either said they hadn’t contributed or that they had been reimbursed for their donation, which would make them illegal, “straw” donations.
Greco’s two homes in The Bronx were raided by the FBI in February, on the same day that federal officials raided the New World Mall.
Greco also attended Hu’s June 2023 fundraiser at the Hudson Yards building, after she’d been living for close to nine months in a two-room suite at Hu’s Fresh Meadows hotel — even as it was serving as a city-funded shelter.
An analysis by THE CITY found that those rooms were included in the city-funded contract, and cost taxpayers more than $50,000 during the months that Greco lived there. City Hall officials and Hu’s attorney have said she paid her way for the suite, but have not produced any receipts when asked.
Greco, who resigned from her post at City Hall in October, has not been accused of wrongdoing by federal officials.
Jordan Coleman
The mayor’s son played a bit part in the Hu saga, staying at the Fresh Meadows hotel with a female friend on at least one occasion in November 2022, according to a former hotel worker.
The mayor has offered no explanation for his son’s presence at the site, when it was serving as a city-funded shelter, saying he doesn’t get into his son’s business.
In early 2023, Greco and Coleman both attended a Chinese celebration in San Francisco, where Greco presented a national community group with a citation from the mayor’s office, according to Documented.
The mayor’s office has said Greco paid her own way for that trip and that she traveled independently of Coleman.
