A third businessman who contributed money to Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s political campaigns has been contacted by federal investigators in recent weeks, in another sign that the probe into the mayor is intensifying.
The businessman, a developer in the French Quarter, received a federal grand jury subpoena seeking texts and other documents related to his discussions with Cantrell about the possibility of her renting an apartment from him, according to two sources with knowledge of the subpoena.
The sources said Cantrell approached the businessman sometime after August, when the City Council barred the mayor from further stays in the city-owned apartment in the Upper Pontalba building in Jackson Square. The sources said Cantrell asked if the businessman could rent her a place.
The developer offered the mayor a lease at a rate above fair-market value in a building he had renovated, the source said, and she declined. She asked for a lower rate elsewhere and the owner refused, the sources said.
In the end, the mayor never stayed in any of the developers’ properties, meaning investigators left the exchange essentially empty-handed, the sources said.
One of the sources also said the FBI has separately approached several hoteliers about whether Cantrell or a member of her NOPD security detail, Jeffrey Vappie, ever stayed in their properties.
Vappie’s wife has accused him in a divorce filing of having an affair with Cantrell, and an internal NOPD investigation found Vappie spent hours on the clock alone with Cantrell inside the Pontalba apartment.
Both Cantrell and Vappie have denied an affair.
'Lessons of the past'
The businessman that Cantrell apparently sought to rent from is at least the third person subjected to questioning by federal investigators about their interactions with the mayor in the last few months, according to two other sources with knowledge of those conversations.
All three people known to have been questioned by the FBI are developers who contributed to her campaigns, records show. At least one of them had directly corresponded with the mayor, by text or email, and the FBI was aware of those conversations.
Lawyers for all three men said their clients had done nothing wrong, and that the federal agents were merely inquiring about the possibility that they had given Cantrell money or gifts for some sort of favorable treatment.
At the same time, the intensity of the federal effort suggests that authorities are aggressively pursuing the possibility of a case against the mayor and may be close to bringing one — though it’s still unclear what evidence they’ve gathered.
Cantrell has said little about the stepped-up activity in the investigation, which has been open for well over a year. At a recent news conference, she hinted at a racial animus to the federal inquiry, saying that being subjected to investigation “seems to be kind of prevalent relative to Black leadership. I am not exempt from that.”
She expanded on those sentiments in an interview Thursday with WWL-TV, in which she said she was drawing on “lessons...of the past, specifically with African-Americans in leadership in our city. And as you get into that last term, this seems to be a practice and one that I’m experiencing firsthand as well.”
Cantrell did not call out names, but the final terms of the city’s last two Black mayors — Ray Nagin and Marc Morial — were marred by federal probes of City Hall.
Morial was never charged, but his uncle and several members of his inner circle were convicted in corruption investigations. Nagin received a 10-year prison sentence for taking bribes.
A focus on Zeton
It's not clear what has led the FBI to begin interviewing the various businessmen about their interactions with Cantrell. But one nexus is Fouad Zeton, the Syrian-born entrepreneur and political rainmaker who has boasted of having a close relationship to Cantrell and who, in April, pleaded guilty to fraud charges.
Federal authorities have questioned Zeton in recent weeks, and they have also sent out a number of grand jury subpoenas seeking information about a former business associate of his, Randy Farrell, according to sources familiar with knowledge of those efforts.
Fouad Zeton
Farrell, who owns a third-party building inspection firm, IECI, pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal tax fraud. He was sentenced in July to five years of probation and ordered to pay $1.1 million in restitution.
Zeton and Farrell used to own a home together on Sylvia Drive in Lakewood North, records show. Zeton also was a friend of the businessman that Cantrell approached about the apartment, multiple sources said.
Zeton has pleaded guilty to conspiring with a New Orleans police officer to rip off an insurance company by falsely reporting a number of artworks stolen, and using a bogus appraisal to inflate their value. He is due to be sentenced in February.
The phony art heist does not appear to have any direct connection to the investigation into Cantrell, but it may have opened the door to the broader probe. The FBI raided two of Zeton’s properties in June 2021, and at some point soon thereafter, federal authorities seized his phone, according to sources.
Cantrell and Zeton know each other well. A former boxer, Zeton memorably got up on the stage at Cantrell’s party when she ran first in the 2017 mayoral primary, and handed the incoming chief executive a championship belt.
The sources said Zeton’s phone contained direct communications between Cantrell and Zeton — and in some of them, Cantrell appeared to be indirectly asking for money or favors. Lawyers familiar with the case say those communications may have given prosecutors a legal basis to obtain and scrutinize Cantrell’s texts and emails more broadly.
Randy Farrell
Zeton’s sentencing has been delayed twice since his guilty plea, which is common in federal cases when the person awaiting sentencing is seen as critical to a still-pending case.
Moreover, sources close to the case confirmed that some of the FBI’s recent questions have concerned Cantrell’s interactions with Zeton.
Zeton has bragged about his relationship with Cantrell, whom he has described as a “friend” and a “good mayor.” He hosted a concert by trumpeter Irvin Mayfield in June 2021, shortly after Mayfield was convicted on federal charges of pilfering roughly $1 million from the city’s library board.
Cantrell introduced Mayfield that night, calling him a “true son of the city.”
Zeton last year suggested to reporters that he is merely a stepping stone for federal prosecutors.
“I have no idea who is the big fish, but I’m not the one,” Zeton said then, adding: “This has nothing to do with artwork.”
'Not how I lead'
Federal authorities’ renewed interest in Farrell is unusual, since he has already been convicted and sentenced.
But it’s worth noting that prosecutors were investigating him for possible corruption charges, as part of a larger probe into local building and permitting departments, and wound up settling for a tax case instead.
Several clients of Farrell’s property-inspection business, IECI, have in recent weeks received grand-jury subpoenas seeking details about their interactions with him, such as the scope of work performed and the cost, according to a source familiar with the subpoenas.
Separately, prosecutors have also subpoenaed emails about Farrell that were sent by a former city employee, Jennifer Cecil, when she was the director of the city’s One Stop licensing and permitting division.
Cecil was fired by the Cantrell administration back in 2019. Two years later, Jared Munster, the former director of the city’s Safety and Permits Department, told WWL-TV in an interview that Cecil had been helping to investigate Farrell and his associates, who then complained to Cantrell.
Munster said those complaining were “voicing...fraudulent complaints to try to paint people holding them accountable in a bad light.”
When Cantrell spoke to WWL last week, she said the leadership of Safety and Permits is much better today than it was, and she denied taking advice or direction from Farrell or anyone else in making personnel decisions there.
“I don’t do favors,” she said. “I’ve never had conversations with anyone — Randy Farrell or anyone else — relative to who I need to put in place in leadership to make it easy for anybody. That’s not how I lead. That’s not leadership and that’s not my style. So I don’t know where that’s coming from.”
Cantrell reiterated that she is fully cooperating with authorities, but declined to answer questions about what information federal investigators have sought from her, calling questions about that “Inappropriate.”
“You have to ask them, you really do,” she said.
She described Zeton in the recent WWL interview as “a friend to political officials throughout the city of New Orleans,” but said she had never taken any gifts or anything else from him. She also said she’d never been asked about such gifts before.
-David Hammer and Katie Moore of WWL-TV contributed to this report.
