A Staten Island business owner has filed a lawsuit against the city government and Cushman & Wakefield, alleging that inadequate supervision of their respective staff members left him without an $8 million real estate contract after he declined to hand over $250,000 in exchange for it.
An amended complaint lodged by attorneys representing Mazen Dayem on October 9 builds on a lawsuit he initiated in July, in which he alleged that Jesse Hamilton, who formerly led the city's real estate operations, and Diana Boutross, Vice Chairman of Brokerage Sales at Cushman, pressured him to make a payment in exchange for city government contracts and subsequently excluded him from deals after he declined to comply.
The amended complaint names the city government and Cushman as additional defendants, while also alleging that the building's owners violated their contractual obligations by entering into a direct arrangement with Boutross.
Dayem is pursuing compensation of up to $52 million from the brokerage, Boutross, Cushman Executive Vice Chairman Gus Field, Hamilton, the building's owners, and the city government over the alleged contract breach. His attorney, Alex Estis of Rosenberg & Estis, told a news outlet that his client's reputation and livelihood are both at stake in the matter. Representatives for the Department of Citywide Administrative Services and Cushman & Wakefield had not returned requests for comment at the time of publication. Neither Boutross nor Hamilton provided a response when approached for comment.
The lawsuit was filed as part of a pattern of misconduct allegations tied to the city agency responsible for municipal real estate under Mayor Eric Adams, and follows prior accusations that led the Manhattan District Attorney to seek indictments against Hamilton and a second Adams aide. Facing a single conspiracy count, Hamilton entered a not-guilty plea and stepped down from his position.
Separate allegations tied to the Adams administration placed both Boutross and Hamilton at the centre of a second matter, with claims that Hamilton directed landlords toward Boutross — whose prior work had been in retail — when those landlords sought to lease office space to city agencies. Both individuals belonged to a wider group whose mobile phones were confiscated by the district attorney upon their return from Japan in October 2024 — a gathering that a prominent broadcaster at the time reported as eight people travelling together.
According to Dayem, Madison Capital and Salmar Properties — the ownership partnership behind a 1.3 million square foot office tower at 850 Third Avenue in Sunset Park — brought him on as a leasing consultant while those owners were in active talks with DCAS over the building. Under the contracts, which carried a combined value of $8 million, Dayem was assigned to support the building's ownership in navigating its dealings with two municipal bodies — the Fire Department of New York and the Department of Homelessness Services.
According to prosecutors, Hamilton conveyed to Dayem during July 2025 that the FDNY contract would only move forward if Dayem handed over $250,000 to the civil servant and brought Boutross in as the tenant broker. When Boutross raised the matter of payment at a walk-through roughly two weeks later, Dayem again declined to hand over the fee.
Dayem's version of events holds that a representative for owners Madison and Salmar made direct contact with Boutross that month about leasing space in the building to the Administration for Children's Services, bypassing the contract terms in doing so. He claimed the group worked to push him out by imposing contract deadlines that left him no realistic path to compliance.
The amended complaint filed by Dayem's legal team on October 9 named both the city and Cushman as parties bearing responsibility — an expansion of the action Dayem had originally brought in July. The amended complaint alleges that the city had received prior complaints, notices, and disciplinary records regarding Hamilton's use of his position at DCAS to advance his own interests contrary to the public trust, and that the city either had or should have had knowledge that Hamilton presented a foreseeable risk of harm to members of the public through unfitness, incompetence, or recklessness.
The lawsuit further contends that Cushman left Boutross and Field without adequate oversight or corrective action until Dayem's standing with the landlords had already been undermined. Estis told reporters that his client intended to pursue the matter fully — not only to address the harm done to Dayem personally, but to establish a precedent that might discourage elected officials from treating others the same way in the future.
