The Story
James McManus was born and raised in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx. His mother was an assistant principal at St. Catharine Academy. His father, an Irish immigrant, disappeared in 1978 after a phone call indicating a contract on his life; a death certificate was eventually issued ten years later.
He attended Hofstra University on a football scholarship. By the early 1990s, federal court records show, he had become involved with the Lucchese Crime Family. In 1994, federal prosecutors in Newark unsealed an indictment charging McManus and six other reputed members of the Lucchese family with fifty-one counts including racketeering, conspiracy, and trafficking. A jury convicted McManus on twenty counts. He served most of an eight-year sentence in a medium-security federal prison in Minersville, Pennsylvania — including, by his own account, two years in solitary for refusing to cooperate.
He paid his debt and came home. He built a contracting business in the Bronx and over time moved into real estate development. In 2021, he acquired a property at 1932 McGraw Avenue in Parkchester. He planned to demolish the existing two-story structure and replace it with affordable apartments. The financing came from Fairbridge Asset Management, a Darien, Connecticut private credit firm founded by John Lettera — a childhood friend with whom McManus had attended Our Lady of the Assumption Parish School.
"It was like a 'Godfather' movie. They made an offer you couldn't refuse, and I turned it down."
The project was eventually upsized to twenty-three units of affordable housing after Fairbridge provided additional financing for air rights from a neighboring property. According to the federal complaint McManus filed on December 19, 2025 in the Southern District of New York, the relationship then deteriorated. The complaint alleges fifteen counts including racketeering, extortion, money laundering, and fraud, and seeks $75 million in damages. Fairbridge has called the allegations "utterly spurious" and has asked the court to dismiss the case.
In October 2025, while McManus was recovering from sextuple bypass surgery he attributes to the stress of the dispute, a foreclosure auction was held on the McGraw Avenue property. According to Crain's, Fairbridge was the only bidder and took control of the site, where work on the affordable housing project remains stalled.
All factual claims sourced from the publicly filed complaint, the publicly filed defense response, federal court records, and reporting by Crain's New York Business, May 5, 2026.