Part 6: Vornado’s $9.5M Scandal Exposes an Accountability Gap
A $9.5 million embezzlement scandal involving a former Vornado Realty Trust executive isn’t just about one individual’s greed. It’s a reflection on the company’s oversight and raises urgent questions about accountability, especially at a firm that shapes so much of New York City’s public space.
Federal prosecutors indicted Jared Solomon, a Vornado vice president who oversaw lucrative Times Square digital billboard leases, for allegedly siphoning over $9.5 million from the company over a 14-year period. Solomon’s alleged scheme, running from 2009 to 2023, funded a luxury real estate shopping spree. He splurged on a $4.6 million Westchester home and a $4 million Manhattan co-op apartment, extravagances that reportedly had co-workers wondering how he could afford them on his salary, long before the fraud came to light.
It’s stunning that such audacity could persist for so long inside of Vornado’s walls. How does nearly $10 million vanish from a major public company without anyone noticing? The uncomfortable answer is that it happens when internal controls and a culture of accountability break down. Vornado is not a mom-and-pop shop—it’s one of New York’s biggest commercial landlords. Yet Solomon’s activities allegedly went unchecked for years. The company even listed him in its annual reports as part of its vaunted “New York leasing machine”—an all-star roster that perhaps enjoyed too much trust and too little scrutiny. In hindsight, that trust was clearly misplaced. Where were the auditors and executives while a manager in Times Square—of all places—quietly diverted millions? Every investor and tenant of Vornado should be asking the same question.
Why should New Yorkers care about an executive embezzling from his employer? Because Vornado isn’t just any landlord; it has an outsized role in our city’s landscape and public spaces. The firm proudly bills itself as “the largest developer and owner” of flashy digital signage in Manhattan, dominating two of the nation’s busiest pedestrian corridors—the Penn Station area and Times Square. In fact, until recently, Vornado was at the heart of the state’s plan to remake the Penn Station neighborhood. Under that now-stalled redevelopment deal, Vornado would erect five massive skyscrapers around Penn Station—a project that critics noted would primarily benefit Vornado itself. In other words, this company isn’t just building offices and billboards; it’s profoundly influencing public space and reaping public trust in the process.
This trust now seems badly shaken. If a Vornado insider could allegedly pilfer millions under the company’s nose, how confidently can the public or policymakers rely on Vornado to steer projects that affect all of us? So far, the company’s leadership has remained conspicuously silent about the Solomon case. But silence isn’t good enough. Vornado owes both its shareholders and the public a full explanation of how this fraud went unchecked for 14 years and what steps it will take to ensure that it never happens again. When a mega-landlord profits from the city’s skyline and streetscape, it must be held to the highest standards. If Vornado wants to keep shaping New York’s future, it needs to prove that it can keep its own house in order.
Understanding who Vornado is—and how it operates—is the first step toward a more transparent and community-driven development process in New York City. In the Vornado Watch series, we explore Vornado’s role in specific projects and unpack its political ties.