Feds slap city on $4M Sandy fraud

The city will repay the feds more than $4 million in ill-gotten Hurricane Sandy aid, it was revealed in Manhattan federal court Wednesday.

After the 2012 megastorm, the city’s Department of Transportation applied for FEMA grants to repair storm-damaged vehicles, but agency dunderheads billed the feds for cars that had been trashed well before the storm.

Worse yet, the city knew it was fudging the numbers but ignored that fact, according to the settlement signed Wednesday by the Department of Justice and city lawyers.

The DOT asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency in 2014 for $12 million to repair 132 city vehicles.

Later, a DOT employee e-mailed a FEMA deputy commissioner to alert the agency that several of the vehicles were “junk” before Sandy and had been “sitting under the highway in the dump for seven years and were being pick[ed] apart by vandals.”

Despite the e-mail, the DOT updated its previous request to ask for more money without acknowledging several of the vehicles were ineligible for grants, the city acknowledges in the settlement.

The city owned up to the error only “after it became aware of an investigation . . . into allegations that the city had improperly submitted” the forms, court papers note.

The DOT “knew they were false as to these inel- igible costs, or made the certifications with reckless disregard or willful blindness as to their truth or falsity,” reads the initial complaint, which was also filed Wednesday.

The Mayor’s Office declined to comment and referred questions to the DOT, whose reps claimed the agency “cooperated fully with the subsequent review.”

It was unclear how much of the $12 million the city received or will be allowed to keep.

The settlement does not absolve city officials of “any criminal liability,” and the DOJ declined to comment on if it would bring charges.

A judge must still approve the agreement.