City jails worker in rent caper

A veteran city correction officer could land on the wrong side of the prison bars.

Mark Smith, 49, was arrested Thursday on charges of illegally collecting nearly $30,000 in New York City Housing Authority rent subsidies intended for low-income residents, said city Department of Investigation Commissioner Margaret Garnett.

Smith, who joined the Department of Correction in October 2014, was suspended immediately after his arrest.

“This defendant, by hiding his employment with the city, allegedly stole tens of thousand of dollars in rental subsidies that could have gone to legitimate tenants in need of the assistance,” said Garnett.

Smith (photo), of Brooklyn, was charged with multiple counts of grand larceny, along with charges of offering a false instrument for filing, falsifying business records, perjury, petit larceny and making an apparently sworn false statement, officials said. He faces up to seven years in prison if convicted on the highest charge of grand larceny.

Smith was accused of hiding his city job from NYCHA to collect the break on his rent after leaving his old gig with Verizon New York and then landing his correction job six months later.

According to authorities, Smith submitted bogus pay stubs and affidavits of income between February 2015 and February 2017 as if still employed at Verizon — a ruse allowing him to receive $28,593 in unwarranted rent subsidies, officials said.