An NYC permit firm filed 57 jobs without review. New York has no license requirement for the role.

From March 2021 to June 2022, architect Kevin McCray filed 57 permit applications for a Brooklyn construction consulting firm called Basic Group. Per his agreement with the firm's owner, Wing Huang, McCray neither prepared nor reviewed most of the documents he submitted. The New York City Department of Buildings accepted them because McCray held professional certification privileges, a DOB authorization that lets licensed architects bypass the department's plan-review queue. The fraud surfaced only because DOB inspectors conducted a physical audit of one property. On September 15, 2026, the Attorney General dissolved Basic Group and barred Huang and McCray from DOB business for life — New York has no permit expediting firm license to revoke, because it has never created one.

How the DOB professional certification shortcut works.

New York City's Department of Buildings processes more than 85,000 new job filings each year. Reviewing every application against the building code would require staff the department does not have and inspection timelines the construction industry cannot absorb. In 1987, the city created a workaround: registered architects and professional engineers may "professionally certify" a permit application, attesting that the project complies with applicable codes, and DOB accepts those filings without sending them to a plan examiner.

Administrative Code §28-116.2 authorizes the program. About 20 percent of professionally certified applications are selected for audit after the fact. A 2021 NYC Comptroller audit found that DOB had no written criteria for selecting which applications to audit and no formal guidelines for opening an investigation based on pattern analysis across an architect's filings.

The certification privilege belongs to the individual architect or engineer who signs the application. It does not belong to the construction consulting firm that assembled the documents. That distinction matters because a firm with no licensed professionals on its staff can still move permit applications through DOB by retaining a licensed architect to sign them, whether or not that architect reads what is being filed.

What Basic Group did, and how the CONH evasion worked.

Basic Group was an architecture and construction consulting firm. Its owner, Wing Huang, held no architecture license. Huang retained McCray to sign DOB filings using McCray's professional certification privileges. McCray's role was not to design or review the work; it was to authorize expedited processing at DOB. From March 2021 to June 2022, McCray filed 57 jobs associated with Basic and did not review many of them.

The scheme became concrete at 191 Bedford Avenue, a 17-unit residential building in Williamsburg that BlueSky Management NY purchased before hiring Basic to handle its renovation filings. DOB requires a Certificate of No Harassment (CONH) before approving renovation permits on buildings in designated community preservation program districts. The CONH requirement documents that tenants in a building slated for renovation have not been pressured or harassed into vacating. Basic and McCray could not obtain the CONH for 191 Bedford Avenue, so they resubmitted plans for a different renovation scope that did not trigger the requirement. DOB approved the revised filing. BlueSky then renovated the building according to the original, CONH-required application.

DOB inspectors found the discrepancy during a physical audit. Under the AG's settlement, Basic was required to complete pending projects and dissolve by August 26, 2026. Wing Huang and Kevin McCray are barred for life from submitting documents to DOB or conducting any business related to DOB. If either violates the settlement terms, Huang faces a $200,000 judgment and McCray faces a $100,000 judgment.

Who holds a license in the NYC building permit ecosystem.

The Basic Group case involves one expediting firm and one architect. The permit ecosystem surrounding a condo or co-op building's local-law compliance projects extends further. The table below shows which roles carry a state license and which do not.

The same system processes your building's LL97, LL11, and LL87 filings.

The Basic Group fraud involved a rental building. The professional certification system and the expediting-firm ecosystem around it are not limited to rental properties. Every large condo or co-op building that files for Local Law 97 carbon emissions compliance, Local Law 11 facade inspection permits, Local Law 87 energy audits, or Local Law 126 parking garage inspections uses this same DOB filing system.

In January 2026, DOB added a board sign-off requirement for one slice of that system: before DOB processes a shareholder's or unit owner's alteration application, the board or its managing agent must formally attest that the filing is authorized. That requirement applies to unit-level renovation work. It does not apply to building-wide compliance projects, which the managing agent coordinates with an expediting firm of the managing agent's selection, without any board sign-off step at DOB.

When a condo or co-op's managing agent retains a permit expediting firm to handle the DOB filings for a Local Law 97 rooftop electrification project, the following are simultaneously true: the managing agent needs no state license; the expediting firm needs no state license; DOB will accept a professionally certified application without independent review 80 percent of the time; and if the application contains errors or misrepresentations, the DOB violations attach to the building, not to the firms that prepared the paperwork.

What the AG's enforcement authority can reach, and what it cannot.

The AG's enforcement in the Basic Group case rested on Executive Law §63(12), the broad business and consumer fraud statute authorizing the AG to seek relief against repeated fraudulent or illegal practices. The fraud here was concrete: McCray signed applications he had contractually agreed not to review; DOB was misled; at 191 Bedford Avenue, existing tenants lost a statutory anti-harassment protection because the CONH was circumvented by a false filing.

That enforcement path requires demonstrable fraud, a higher bar than ordinary professional error. A managing agent who retains an expediting firm that files an inaccurate Local Law 87 energy audit is not necessarily committing fraud within §63(12)'s scope. It may be professional negligence by an unlicensed firm that carries no professional discipline structure. When that happens, the building receives a DOB violation. The expediting firm executes its next contract.

As documented in Why the NY AG can't help with most condo governance disputes, the AG's Real Estate Finance Bureau can reach sponsors who misstate offering plans under the Martin Act. It cannot reach a managing agent's vendor selection. The Basic Group case illustrates the same structural line: deliberate fraud in the permitting process was reachable under §63(12); professional failure in the same process has no enforcement home in New York law.

Bottom line.

Basic Group's owner spent years running a construction consulting firm that submitted unreviewed DOB applications under a licensed architect's name. Wing Huang held no architecture license and no permit expediting license. New York requires neither. The AG shut the firm down because the conduct was fraud. The structural condition that made the fraud possible — an expediting ecosystem where firms operate under no licensing requirement, no background check, and no professional discipline body — remains in place.

For condo and co-op owners, the question is not whether your managing agent's expediting firm is committing the kind of deliberate misrepresentation prosecuted at 191 Bedford Avenue. The question is what your building's legal options are when its Local Law 97 electrification permits or Local Law 11 facade filings are prepared by a firm that carries no professional obligation to get them right. At present, those options are a civil lawsuit or a DOB violation proceeding, neither of which begins until the building has already absorbed the cost of the error.

Primary sources: AG press release, Basic Group settlement (September 15, 2026) · NYC Comptroller audit: DOB professional certification program (2021) · Executive Law §63(12) · NYC HPD: Certificate of No Harassment program · NY Senate S.71, managing-agent registration bill (2025-2026)

Companion resources: A managing agent illegally evicted four tenants. New York has no license to revoke. · Why the NY AG can't help with most condo governance disputes · S.71: the managing-agent licensure bill nobody's talking about · Your contractor is ready. Your board has no deadline to approve the permit. · The NYC local law extraction stack · Managing agent licensure gap (issues page) · Write to your representative about S.71