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The inspector, Saverio F. Todaro, 68, submitted clean asbestos or lead test results for well over 200 buildings and apartments.
The number of potential victims of Mr. Todaro’s fraud, which spanned at least a decade, loomed so large that the Manhattan United States attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, created a separate Web page to comply with a law requiring it to notify victims.
His admissions late last month have raised troubling questions about whether such conduct might be more widespread, and it has led to an expanding inquiry focused on some aspects of the work of asbestos and lead inspectors in the city.
“Todaro’s guilty plea is not the end of the story,” said the Manhattan United States attorney, Preet Bharara. “This investigation is very much ongoing.”
The investigation, in part, seeks to determine whether he conspired with others — taking bribes to fashion crude forgeries and mask his failure to conduct any tests — or whether he acted alone for other reasons, officials said.
The breadth of his crimes, the simplicity of the schemes and the apparent ease with which he got away with them over the years also suggest that the city’s oversight is strained, at best.
“It’s the tip of the iceberg,” said one official briefed on the matter and on the issues facing city and federal regulators, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing. “We just don’t know how big the iceberg is.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/ny...spect.html?hpw
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