A longtime Fire Department employee who oversaw safety inspections of day care centers in New York City was charged on Friday with accepting thousands of dollars in bribes for ignoring or playing down safety violations.
The employee, Carlos Montoya, 54, was also accused of taking money to help day care operators obtain fake paperwork that certified them as eligible to provide services for infants, the authorities said.
Mr. Montoya appeared late Friday before a federal magistrate judge, Henry B. Pitman, in United States District Court in Manhattan. Judge Pitman ordered Mr. Montoya released on $100,000 bond.
Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said, “Carlos Montoya was responsible for certifying that day care centers throughout the city complied with fire safety standards, but instead, he allegedly solicited bribes to look the other way, potentially compromising the safety of the children who attended these centers.”
Rose Gill Hearn, the commissioner of the city Department of Investigation, said Mr. Montoya’s arrest capped “an extensive investigation that uncovered a $1 million day care fraud and bribery scheme and led to five city employees’ and eight day care operators’ pleading guilty so far.”
When the investigation was announced in August 2010, the authorities described a scheme in which a group of Russian-speaking immigrants who controlled more than 30 day care centers in Brooklyn and on Staten Island and referred to themselves as the “Congregation” paid more than $100,000 in bribes to city workers to essentially “look the other way and grease the gravy train,” Mr. Bharara said at the time.
The city employees had worked for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Human Resources Administration and the Administration for Children’s Services, agencies that have roles in the child care benefit program, which pays child care costs for low-income parents.
Mr. Montoya was the first Fire Department employee to be charged as part of the investigation, an official said. He had been a fire standards inspector with the department since 1993 and a supervising inspector since at least 2005, a criminal complaint says.
A Fire Department spokesman said on Friday that Mr. Montoya, of Brooklyn, who faces two conspiracy charges, had been suspended without pay.
Mr. Montoya did not enter a plea in court, but after the proceeding, his lawyer, Oliver S. Storch, said that his client was “shocked and saddened by the allegations,” and planned to fight the criminal charges and any administrative proceedings within the department.
“My client has served the city for over 20 years with distinction,” Mr. Storch said.
Mr. Montoya’s illegal activity dated from at least 2008, the complaint said. At one point in 2010, he told a group of day care operators that for $10,000, he could “get any day care center” the necessary documents for them to provide services for infants, whose care is reimbursed by the city at a higher rate, the authorities said.
The complaint also said that one operator, a member of the Congregation who has since pleaded guilty and is now cooperating with the government, paid Mr. Montoya $250 each time he came to conduct an inspection.
Mr. Montoya took the money, said the center had passed and “left without ever actually performing an inspection,” the complaint said.
In 2009, the same witness and others opened a center in Brooklyn, Pitkin Day Care Center, that was not licensed to provide services to infants, the authorities said. The witness paid Mr. Montoya $3,000 every three months, apparently over a year, to obtain the necessary documents.
“At no time did Montoya perform inspections of Pitkin to determine whether it was safe to provide day care services to children, let alone infants,” the complaint said.
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