Victor Natanzon, Citytime Scammer, Pleads Guilty

Victor Natanzon, one of six people accused of defrauding the city of $80 million as part of the CityTime fiasco, pleaded guilty today to bribery and other charges, the New York Times' William K. Rashbaum reports. CityTime of course is the much maligned 14 year effort to automate the city's payroll system that grew from a $63 million budget to more than $750 million.

Natanzon, Rashbaum reported, agreed to cooperate with authorities, a step that should help investigators learn not only how the $80 million was stolen, but the much larger question of how the project's bottom line swelled with such morbid obesity. He also pleaded to money laundering and interstate transportation in aid of racketeering.