The Puerto Rican eatery, located in a remote industrial section of Westchester Square, is owned by Richard Caban, the brother of NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban. The establishment has for the past few years gained a reputation as a hangout for Adams, who celebrated his birthday there last year, other high-profile elected leaders, including State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, as well as top NYPD brass, including Commissioner Caban and Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey.

But Con Sofrito has since 2022 faced a bevy of open building and fire safety violations over a sprawling “party room” it erected in its parking lot during the pandemic without proper permits. The restaurant’s landlord, a corporate entity named 1315 Commerce LLC, sued Richard Caban in Bronx Civil Court over the party room in October after it refused to dismantle the illegal structure, a development first reported last month by the news outlet The City.

In a previously unreported development, Jamie Schreck, an attorney for the landlord, filed court papers in that case last week saying Richard Caban had finally agreed to break down the party room by March 1 — and close Con Sofrito for good by Aug. 31.

In addition, Caban agreed as part of a settlement to cough up $14,000 to cover Schreck’s attorney fees and continue to pay rent through the final date of Con Sofrito’s occupancy, the court papers show. The presiding judge, Betty Lugo, approved the settlement in a decision released on the court docket Friday.

Speaking to the Daily News on Friday afternoon, Schreck said his client is pleased with the settlement and looking to find a new tenant who’s not in the hospitality industry.

“What he told me is that he’s done with restaurants after this,” Schreck said, referring to Joseph Dedona III, the manager of the corporate landlord entity. “He’s fed up with the restaurant industry.”

The settlement might not spell the absolute end of Con Sofrito, though.

“They want to find a new location and a new liquor license,” Schreck said of Caban and his Con Sofrito partners.

An attorney for Richard Caban did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did a spokesman for the mayor.

The illegal party room that sparked the court feud has been featured prominently in photos and videos posted to Instagram by Jimmy Rodriguez, an infamous Bronx restaurateur who lists himself online as the “manager” and “creator” of Con Sofrito.

Rodriguez posted videos and photos in September from the mayor’s 63rd birthday party — which was held in the party room.

Rodriguez used to run Jimmy’s Bronx Cafe, a popular club shuttered in 2004 after coming under suspicion of being a hotbed for gang and drug activity. In the 1990s, Major League Baseball officials warned Yankees players to stay away from Jimmy’s after two shootings took place in front of the club.

Rodriguez did not return a request for comment Friday.

Thursday’s procedural step came in the form of a resolution authorizing the speaker to pursue legal action on behalf of the full Council to compel the mayor to implement the laws, which are designed to expand access to CityFHEPS, a voucher program subsidizing rent for low-income New Yorkers. The measure breezed through the Council in a voice vote with overwhelming support.

With the resolution adopted, the speaker wouldn’t say what form any legal action against the mayor will take, though, or when it might be initiated.

“There has been no final decision yet on any legal action,” she told reporters. “But this maintains our ability to keep our options open, that’s what the resolution does.”

Among other provisions, the laws in dispute would expand access to CityFHEPS by eliminating a rule requiring that otherwise income-eligible individuals must enter a homeless shelter before they can apply for a voucher. By scrapping that rule, Council Democrats have argued the city can prevent more New Yorkers from becoming homeless.

The Council enacted the laws last summer by overriding the mayor’s vetoes of them. Nonetheless, the mayor didn’t implement the laws by a legally mandated Jan. 9 deadline, arguing the city can’t shoulder the added cost that would come with them.

After Thursday’s resolution vote, Adams spokeswoman Kayla Mamelak reiterated that argument, saying “this legislation will add $17 billion onto the backs of our taxpayers” — a figure Council Democrats argue is exaggerated.

The speaker’s reluctance to talk about what exactly her next step will be on the legal front comes as others are also mulling court action over the CityFHEPS matter.

The Legal Aid Society, which by law represents the city’s homeless population, said last month it would file a lawsuit against the mayor to force him to implement the CityFHEPS laws. At the time, a Council spokesman said the speaker was eyeing legal action, too, and that it wasn’t clear whether she would bring her own lawsuit or join Legal Aid’s filing.

A spokesman for the Legal Aid Society declined to comment after Thursday’s vote.

Sliwa, who erroneously identified the Bronxite as a Venezuelan migrant during a live interview Tuesday night on national TV, admitted to the Daily News Thursday he could have been “milder and calmer” during the episode caught live on FOX News cameras.

But his group’s actions during the attack and Sliwa’s on-camera comments sparked anger and outrage across NYC Thursday.

“Washed-up comic book villain instructed his herd of wannabe vigilantes to beat up a guy they decided ‘looked like’ a migrant. A hate crime,” Brooklyn Councilman Justin Brannan wrote on X. “Live on TV. Violence of any kind, whether against cops or innocent people in Times Sq, must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“The wheels of justice must move at an appropriate pace. We don’t have the luxury to do what we saw Curtis Sliwa did,” Mayor Adams, Sliwa’s opponent in the 2021 mayoral election, said at an unrelated press briefing with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. “To see someone on the corner and, based on their ethnicity, automatically identify them as a migrant or asylum seeker, and not a long-time Bronx resident — that is not what we can do. We have to get it right.”

Adams and Brannan were far from the only ones to tag Sliwa.

On CNN Thursday morning, Gov. Hochul said no one should take the law into their own hands.

“This is not the Wild West. This is New York State,” Hochul said.

Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller and possible Democratic mayoral candidate in 2025, described Sliwa’s antics as “racism” and said he looked forward to meeting him on the debate stage.

“This kind of racism has no place in our city. Unfortunately, Curtis Sliwa went to his usual worst instincts,” Stringer said. “I look forward as a potential Democratic nominee to debating this warmed-over MAGA Republican in 2025.”

While some politicos claimed the attack was motivated by hate and racism, Bragg was not ready to call it a hate crime but did call the incident “disturbing.”

“We’re going to do what we do on all of our matters, right?” Bragg said at the briefing with Adams. “So I think there are people speculating and using a legal phrase in [using] ‘hate crime.’ We don’t make assumptions, we investigate and look at the evidence, so we’ll do what we do in all the other matters — follow the facts.”

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards chalked the incident up to Sliwa’s typical fear mongering.

“This is classic Curtis Sliwa: in the mud, stoking division in New York City. And it’s shameful that he would believe that because someone speaks Spanish, they’re a migrant,” Richards said. “I’m hoping people like Curtis realize our diversity is our strength.”

In an afternoon press conference at City Hall, City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams said the “actions by Mr. Sliwa and his group” amounted to “fear-mongering” against migrants.

“Seeing incidents and occurrences like that certainly does not help the climate of the city right now. It actually does a lot of harm, creates a lot of confusion, a lot of anger,” she said.

Everyday New Yorkers also slammed Sliwa, who founded the Guardian Angels in the 1970s when crime was raging in the Big Apple and has been one of the more vocal critics chiding the city over its handling of the migrant crisis.

Desiree Joy Frias, a mutual aid volunteer, said she wasn’t surprised by the fracas or that Sliwa was wrong about the man’s background.

“This is not new behavior. They used to take down Black and brown people all the time in the 70s and 80s,” she said. “That people feel that they can handle things extra judiciously — that’s terrifying.”

Sliwa, who spoke to The News before going to a dermatologist appointment, didn’t seemed too fazed about all the controversy.

“All of these folks, I understand, they’re looking to dance on my grave. I take enough shots at them all the time, so it’s fair. But let’s get real here, guys” he said. “Let my haters know it’s not going to stop us from doing what we’ve done for 45 years — although on this one — my mistake. The rhetoric I used, I should not have used in that moment.”

Police were called around 10:55 a.m. to the address on W. Kingsbridge Road near Webb Ave. in Kingsbridge Heights, across from the James J. Peters Veterans Administration Medical Center.

At the scene, officers discovered the victim with multiple gunshot wounds to his torso.

Medics rushed him to St. Barnabas Hospital, but he could not be saved.

The victim’s name was not released as police worked to track down his family.

There were no immediate arrests.

The bill, authored by Bronx Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, is a direct response to the NYCHA bribery scandal that came to light Tuesday as federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted 70 current and former Housing Authority superintendents on charges that they solicited $2 million in bribes from private contractors. In exchange for the bribes, the supers are accused of giving the private operators no-bid “micro purchase” contracts for NYCHA complex construction jobs that didn’t exceed $10,000 in value.

Under current law, NYCHA doesn’t need to publicly report information about procurements in that small-dollar price category — and Torres argued it’s that gap in transparency that has allowed corruption to fester at the public housing agency.

‘“For five years, I have been sounding the alarm about NYCHA’s chronic lack of oversight over no-bid contracting, which can easily become a breeding ground for fraud, corruption and abuse,” said Torres, who as a member of the City Council called in 2019 for stricter transparency requirements around NYCHA micro-purchase contracts. Torres also grew up in public housing.

“One case of bribery or a few cases of bribery can be explained away as outliers,” he continued. “But 70 cases of bribery, affecting one-third of NYCHA properties, points to a systemic failure of management and oversight. It points to a culture of corruption.”

Asked for a response to Torres’ comments, NYCHA spokeswoman Barbara Brancaccio said the authority has “already made substantial reforms to its procurement processes,” citing a “nearly 50% reduction in micro-purchase spend on services” since 2021.

“While micro-purchases allow for staff to quickly and flexibly respond to emergencies at the development level, these recent and unfortunate events demonstrate that additional oversight is needed,” Brancaccio said.

Torres’ legislation, a copy of which was obtained by The News ahead of its introduction in the House of Representatives, would specifically order the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to require every public housing agency in the country to disclose information about all private outsourcing contracts they award.

Such disclosures would divulge the date of the contract, information about the goods and services provided as part of it as well as the identities of the agency official who solicited the contract and the vendor executing it, according to the bill text.

It was not immediately clear how the bill will fare in the House, which is controlled by Republicans.

None of the contractors who paid out bribes to NYCHA supers were charged as part of Tuesday’s massive bust.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a press conference that the indicted supers created an environment in which micro-purchase bidders knew they couldn’t get the contracts unless they paid kickbacks first.

In one especially egregious case, Juan Mercado, a super at the Hammel Houses and Carleton Manor, two jointly managed NYCHA properties in Queens, solicited and accepted at least $314,300 in bribes between April 2014 and this past July, making him the top offender in the scandal, according to prosecutors.

In a letter to NYCHA CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt on Wednesday, Torres lamented that the agency never tightened rules around micro-purchase procurement after his 2019 lament. He asked her to provide him with information about all steps the agency has taken since then to improve oversight in the contracting gray area.

“NYCHA owes the people of New York transparency about the progress it has made toward procurement reform in public housing,” he wrote to Bova-Hiatt.

All in all, 70 NYCHA superintendents squeezed out just over $2 million in bribes from private actors in exchange for giving them no-bid contracts to do building repairs at the Housing Authority’s various projects across the city, according to a string of criminal complaints unsealed Tuesday.

Here are details on the 10 NYCHA supers accused of taking the biggest bribes, totaling $1.02 million:

1. JUAN MERCADO: 

A super at the Hammel Houses and Carleton Manor, two jointly-managed NYCHA properties in Queens, Mercado is accused of soliciting and accepting at least $314,300 in bribes between April 2014 and this past July — making him the scandal’s top offender.

The feds didn’t name or indict any of the private actors who allegedly issued the bribes at the heart of the scandal, in many cases because they cooperated with investigators, but Mercado’s complaint says he routinely demanded between 10% and 20% of a contract’s total price tag as a kickback before signing off on it. In total, Mercado’s accused of issuing no-bid contracts worth at least $1.7 million in exchange for bribes.

2. NIRMAL LORICK:  

Lorick, a super at Queens’ Baisley Park Houses, raked in about $153,000 in bribes between January 2014 and this past July, according to court papers.

In exchange for those payouts, Lorick gave the go-ahead on issuing no-bid work orders worth some $1.3 million, the feds say.

3. JOSE HERNANDEZ:  

While working as a super at the Marble Hill Houses in the Bronx, Hernandez pocketed about $95,000 in bribes between 2014 and September 2020, the feds charge.

The bribes prompted him to sign off on repair contracts worth about $640,000. The feds say that Hernandez made clear to contractors vying for repair work that they “would not be awarded no-bid contracts” at his developments unless they paid him bribes first.

4. DWARKA RUPNARAIN: 

Rupnarain retired from his superintendent post at the Bronx’s Gun Hill Houses in December 2022.

Before that, Rupnarain is accused of having taken some $83,100 in bribes between February 2015 and June 2022. In exchange, he cleared the way for no-bid contracts worth at least $508,000, the feds say.

5. VERONICA HOLLMAN: 

While working as a super at Brooklyn’s Pink Houses between May 2018 and July 2022, Hollman pocketed at least $80,000 in bribes in exchange for issuing contracts worth some $400,000, according to prosecutors.

“If [an unnamed contractor] did not make payments to HOLLMAN, HOLLMAN would not award [the contractor] additional no-bid contracts for work at Pink Houses,” prosecutors wrote in her complaint, citing interviews with the contractor.

6. RIGOBERTO “RICKY” CHARRIEZ:

Charriez pocketed at least $70,000 in bribes while working at various projects across the city as a super between 2016 and 2023, including most recently at the Richmond Terrace development in Queens. The bribes paved the way for Charriez to issue contracts worth about $377,000, the feds allege.

“The contracts were typically each worth approximately $5,000, and [an unnamed contractor] therefore paid CHARRIEZ approximately $500 in cash per contract,”  his complaint states.

7. DEXTER LINO:

While working as an assistant superintendent between 2019 and 2021 at NYCHA’s Latimer Gardens in Queens, Lino raked in about $70,000 in bribes, too, prosecutors say.

The bribes prompted Lino to award no-bid repair deals worth about $245,000, according to his complaint.

8. CLARENCE SAMUEL:

While working at NYCHA’s Gompers Consolidation project in Manhattan between 2016 and September 2022, Samuel collected at least $56,000 in bribes, according to the feds.

In exchange, he allegedly green-lit no-bid contracts worth about $250,000.

9. FRANKIE VILLANUEVA:

Villanueva took some $50,000 in bribes while working as a super at the Mott Haven Houses in the Bronx, according to his complaint.

In exchange, he issued no-bid contracts worth about $200,000, the feds say.

10. MICHAEL JOHNSON

In exchange for at least approximately $48,000 in bribes between 2018 and 2022, Johnson used his power as a super at Brooklyn’s Cypress Hills Houses to issue contracts worth about $225,000.

Against that backdrop, Johnson retired from NYCHA in January 2023.

Baraquiel Castelan, 32, was drinking at a party in Queens before heading to El Chicanito bar and restaurant on E. 153rd St. near Elton Ave. in the Melrose section of the Bronx around 3:50 a.m. Saturday, Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news briefing Tuesday.

Castelan, a known Cholo gang member, was with a group who began arguing with another squad at the bar, who were members of the Raza Loca street gang, according to Kenny.

The argument turned physical and the men began throwing punches, pool sticks and chairs.

“This is straight-up gang beef between two Mexican gangs,” Kenny said.

The groups were thrown out of the bar and a Raza Loca member hid in a doorframe, Kenny said. As Castelan walked through the door, the man plunged a knife into the right side of his neck, hitting an artery.

Medics rushed him to Lincoln Hospital, but he could not be saved.

Castelan’s friend was also stabbed at the bar but survived the attack, Kenny said.

A couple of blocks away shortly after the stabbings, a man in a bodega was approached by a group of men who asked, “Are you Cholo?” The man said no and was stabbed in the right side, according to the NYDP chief. He also survived the stabbing.

Police believe they have identified the man who killed Castelan and are working to arrest him.

Cleyber Andrade, 20, and Juane Uzcatgui, 23, had just been released from Queens Criminal Court when NYPD cops and U.S. marshals raided the apartment on Bronx Park East near Adee Ave. in Allerton about 5:30 a.m. Monday.

Five other people were in the apartment, as well as 22 stolen phones and the IDs of several victims in the cellphone snatch scam, which has targeted residents in every borough except Staten Island, cops said.

Victor Parra, the 30-year-old accused ringleader of the robbery streak that includes 62 thefts involving both cell phone grabs and then hacking financial data mined from the phones, remains on the loose, cops said.

The robbery crew involves a number of migrants, cops said. Five migrants were arrested during Monday’s raid.

Andrade and Uzcatgui were accused of swiping phones from two unsuspecting victims on the Lower East Side late Thursday and early Friday, cops said. The two men were on a moped when they allegedly ripped the phones from their victims’ hands and sped over the Triborough Bridge into Queens.

Cops and an NYPD helicopter pursued the two robbery suspects who were seen putting the stolen phones, as well as one of their own, in a bag and dumping them off the side of the BQE, police said.

A good Samaritan found the bag and brought it to cops at the 114th Precinct stationhouse.

Cops tracked the phones back to Andrade and Uzcatugi and arrested them on Saturday. Both men were charged with criminal possession of stolen property and resisting arrest. Uzcatugi was also charged with grand larceny and petty larceny.

Both men were released without bail after seeing a judge Sunday evening, court documents show. Their immigration status was not immediately known.

The crew the two men are connected to is known for quick-hit phone snatches, sometimes taking the phones from their victims’ hands as they zip by on mopeds.

In one of the robberies, two moped-riding men approached a woman in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, on Jan. 23, grabbed her phone and dragged her down the sidewalk until she hit a bike rack. The men took off, leaving her on the pavement, startling video released by the NYPD shows.

The woman didn’t want to speak of the trauma she suffered when reached by phone Tuesday.

The crooks hack bank information from the phones and make illegal transactions in the U.S. and South America, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press conference Monday.

If the victims acted quickly and put holds on their bank accounts, Parra would ship the stolen phones to Colombia to be reprogrammed and sold, cops said.

Others arrested in Monday’s raid included Alexander Dayker, 20, and Roxanna Sahos, 24. Their arraignments in Bronx Criminal Court were pending Tuesday.

Cops believe there are 14 people in the crew and are working to nab the others involved.

The robberies date back to November, when most of the men first arrived in the city. The most recent robbery happened Sunday night in Chinatown, cops said.

“It doesn’t matter if a person is a migrant asylum seeker or if the person is a long-term New Yorker,” Mayor Adams said at the press conference. “You break the law, you will be investigated and it will be handled by our criminal justice system.”

Monday’s bust came amid a rise in tensions since a number of migrant men were caught on video beating NYPD cops near Times Square on Jan. 27.

SEE RELATED: NYPD, with Mayor Adams in tow, busts robbery ring with suspects including migrants

Neither Parra nor his crew are believed to have any connection to the incident, authorities said, though cops are investigating possible connections to a Venezuelan gang based on social media posts, tattoos and statements made.

Baraquiel Castelan, 32, was found bleeding from his neck outside the El Chicanito bar and restaurant on E. 153rd St. near Elton Ave. in Melrose at about 3:50 a.m. Saturday, police said.

Paramedics rushed Castelan to Lincoln Hospital, but he could not be saved.

“All we want is the person who did it has to pay,” said his younger sister, Olivia Castelan, 29. “A lot of things happen in that place. Why is it still open? Somebody got murdered there … How do we feel that we have to walk and see that place open, knowing that my brother died there?”

Castelan, who lived a short distance from where he was killed, was arguing with a group of people when the killer him stabbed in the neck, arm and chest, then ran down E. 153rd St., cops said.

Police released photos of a suspect Sunday, and are asking anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS.

Castelan had two young daughters, ages 9 and 1, his sister said, and did delivery work for nearby pharmacies until a recent accident. He also worked at a family restaurant in his neighborhood, said his civil lawyer, Christopher Fitzgerald.

“My nephews, they looked at him like a father figure and I just want justice for my brother,” his sister said with a sob Sunday. “He didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Castelan was featured in a 2016 New York Times article, part of a series chronicling every murder from the year before in the NYPD’s 40th Precinct.

At the time, he was locked up on Rikers Island as he awaited trial for attempted murder in the stabbing of a man named Anthony Velazquez, who had a child with another of his siblings.

Police described him at the time as a leader in the Mexican-American Cholos 152 street gang — but he denied being a gang leader, calling the Cholos “more like friends than a gang.”

In the interview, he discussed how another man, Roberto Rodriguez, was killed before he could exonerate him in the stabbing.

Even so, Castelan was able to beat the charges — after a different witness took the stand at his trial, one who gave a statement to police early in the investigation that he didn’t stab Velazquez.

Castelan sued the NYPD in 2018, accusing police of not coming forward with that statement until the trial was already underway. That case is still pending.

“They tried to pin it on him,” Castelan’s sister said about the stabbing, insisting that he wasn’t involved in gang activity.

“But when he got out he was completely clean, upstanding,” she said, “with a solid job.”

Fitzgerald, Castelan’s lawyer, said his 27-month experience on Rikers Island left him traumatized.

During his stay there, he was stabbed in the head by another inmate, and when he got out, he had missed out on raising his oldest daughter — who was 3 and didn’t recognize him after his release.

“Every time I met within or spoke with him I was very impressed how down to earth and mild-mannered and articulate he was, how he cared for his kid and his family,” Fitzgerald said.

“This experience really did truly traumatize him … He was a working guy, and just by this unfortunate set of circumstances he got swept up int the apparatus and went through the nightmare of being locked up on Rikers Island.”

Olivia Castelan said she learned about her brother’s murder when someone knocked on her mom’s door and told the woman. She rushed out to the scene and went to the hospital soon after.

“He’s so cold. The body was so cold,” she recalled. “Everyone in the neighborhood loved him.”

Baraquiel, one of five siblings, stood up for their family and took charge after their father was murdered in Mexico about a year ago.

“That really affected my brother mentally,” she said of their father’s death. “It affected everyone…. “For someone to yank everything out, we felt like we were lost, like we had nobody.”

Their mother Juana Lopez, who was living in the U.S., returned to Mexico for a time, but after her own life was repeatedly threatened, her family convinced her to return to New York in December, Olivia Castelan said.

Baraquiel held on to her apartment and she returned to live with him.

“He was happy. At least his last few days he was able to sit down with my mom and eat and be there with her,” his sister said. “Our life was starting to feel a little bit at peace.”

The victim was first struck by the driver of a four-door sedan zipping south on White Plains Road near Archer St. in Parkchester about 4 a.m., cops said.

The impact sent the pedestrian flying into the northbound lanes, where an SUV driver struck him, police said.

Medics took the victim to Jacobi Medical Center but he couldn’t be saved. His name was not immediately released.

Both drivers stayed on the scene and have not been charged as police continue to investigate the crash.