Eric Adams adviser suspended after giving reporter cash in potato chip bag

A volunteer adviser to New York Mayor Eric Adams has been suspended from his reelection campaign after she handed a journalist an envelope of cash stuffed inside a bag of potato chips.

The reporter, Katie Honan of the City, said that Winnie Greco, a longtime adviser to Adams who volunteered for his reelection campaign, handed her the potato chip bag, which contained a red envelope stuffed with cash, after a campaign event in Harlem on Wednesday. Honan said that once she realized what was inside, she brought the chip bag back to her newsroom, where she and her editors contacted the New York City Department of Investigation to report the incident.

Greco’s attorney, Steven Brill, said in an email that her action was “no payoff” but instead “a gesture of kindness blown out of a Chinese tradition of handing money to others as a form of gratitude and friendship.”

“She knows this reporter and was fond of her,” Brill said, adding that it “it may appear strange, but there was nothing nefarious about it.”

Greco told the City she made a mistake and apologized, and said the money she gave Honan was “a culture thing,” according to the outlet.

“Winnie had no official role with the campaign. She volunteered her time because she believes in the Mayor and deeply cares about Chinese community in New York,” Brill said in an emailed statement Thursday. “Yesterday, she was asked to discontinue her volunteering.”

Adams and his campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post early Thursday. But campaign spokesperson Todd Shapiro told the New York Post they were “shocked” by the reports of Greco’s actions. “Winnie Greco holds no position in this campaign and has been suspended from all volunteer campaign-related activities,” he said.

Shapiro said Adams “had no prior knowledge of this matter.”

Greco is a close adviser to Adams who served as director for Asian affairs in City Hall until she resigned last year, after the FBI raided properties she owned. It remains unclear what federal agents were searching for. The City reported that federal agents also raided a mall in Queens as part of the investigation. Those operations occurred after federal agents raided properties associated with two other Adams aides, Brianna Suggs and Rana Abbasova.

The former New York police captain’s mayoralty has been dogged by scandal, including a federal corruption probe for bribery, campaign finance and conspiracy offenses that last year made him the first sitting New York mayor in recent history to face criminal charges.

A judge dismissed that case in April after a controversial push from President Donald Trump’s Justice Department — which argued, without providing compelling evidence, that the former head of the Manhattan federal prosecutor’s office pursued charges against Adams for political reasons. Adams has maintained his innocence in the corruption case.

The specter of scandal now looms over Adams’s long-shot reelection bid as an independent, as bribery and conspiracy charges widen over his allies and associates. Early Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office indicted Adams’s former chief adviser, Ingrid Lewis-Martin, on a fresh round of bribery and conspiracy charges. Lewis-Martin is already facing bribery charges from 2024. Also included in Thursday’s indictment were Lewis-Martin’s son, Glenn; Jesse Hamilton, a deputy commissioner in Adams’s cabinet; and siblings Gina and Tony Argento, who have previously donated to Adams’s campaign.

Honan said in an interview Thursday that Greco texted her Wednesday after an event to mark the opening of an Adams campaign office in Harlem, and asked her to meet near a TD Bank nearby. The two met and walked into a Whole Foods store next door, where Greco repeatedly tried to hand her a crumpled bag of Herr’s sour cream and onion ripple potato chips, Honan said. Honan said she eventually accepted the bag of chips because Greco was so insistent, and the two women parted ways.

Honan said she hoped the bag might contain a note tipping her off about secret information from the Adams campaign. “I planned to just throw the bag of chips out, but at the top of the subway stairs, I opened it and … I did immediately recognize it as a Lunar New Year traditional envelope,” she said. She saw a wad of bills in the envelope, including a $100 bill and several $20 bills. There were also chips inside the bag, she said.

Honan said that once she realized the envelope contained money and not information — the City said its staff did not count the cash or open the envelope fully because it anticipates “possible law enforcement investigations” — she called Greco to tell her she could not accept the money.

When Greco did not immediately offer to come collect the money, Honan returned to her office with it and alerted editors, she said. After the City reported the incident, it said that the office of Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella contacted the publication’s attorneys and that an investigator retrieved the bag, envelope and cash. Nocella’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment early Thursday.

The City said that when it contacted Greco to ask her why she gave Honan cash, Greco apologized profusely, suggested that the gesture was not important and said that “I just wanted to be her friend.” She also asked if the outlet could “forget about this” and asked that it not cover the incident.

“Please don’t do in the news nothing about me,” she reportedly said, adding: “It’s a culture thing.”

Honan said she is familiar with the tradition among some communities of Asian descent of offering money as a sign of friendship and gratitude — a Lunar New Year tradition consists of offering relatives cash inside red envelopes — but she believes Greco “greatly misread the whole situation.”

“She said it was a gesture of friendship, but I don’t want money, I just want information as a reporter,” Honan said.

“As much as it is part of her culture, she did work for the city of New York for two years, which allegedly has extensive ethics training,” Honan added. “And although she’s no longer a City Hall employee, she should have known better.”