New York Today: Crime and Punishment

John Marshall Mantel for The New York TimesMark Mazer, left, and Gerard Denault face sentencing in the CityTime scandal.

Updated 6:58 a.m.

Good Monday morning to you.

It was one of the biggest scandals in New York City’s recent history.

The city, looking to get more efficient at managing its sprawling work force, hired outside contractors to redesign the payroll system and help save money.

Instead, the contractors took advantage of weak oversight and inflated the $63 million project known as CityTime into a $700 million boondoggle.

Today, three men who collectively stole more than $40 million while working on the project will be sentenced in federal court in Manhattan on conspiracy, bribery and money-laundering charges.

Prosecutors asked the judge for sentences of 105 years, 80 years, and 30 to 40 years.

Fitting punishment, they said, for men who treated the city “like it was their own giant A.T.M.”

The men’s lawyers, of course, say the proposals are excessive.

“Absurd on its face,” wrote the lawyer for the defendant facing the proposed 105-year term, Gerard Denault.

“Does the government really believe that this offense deserves a sentence six times longer than sentences imposed for murder?”

Mr. Denault’s lawyer asked the judge for a five-year sentence instead.

Here’s what else you need to know.

WEATHER

Mostly sunny, warm and downhill from here.

A high of 64 today.

Rainy and chillier on Tuesday. Lots of rain on Wednesday.

Live in the present.

COMMUTE

Subways: Delays on the southbound 5. Check latest status.

Rails: Delays on North Jersey Coast Line. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: Deegan very slow southbound through the Bronx. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.

COMING UP TODAY

- Representative Michael Grimm of Staten Island is expected to be indicted on federal fraud charges.

- State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, accompanied by Mayor de Blasio, releases a report on the growth of the city’s high-tech industry. 12:45 p.m.

- Advocates for worker safety release a report on workplace deaths and march to what they say is an unsafe construction site. 51st Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, at noon.

- Holocaust survivors from Belgium, Germany and Poland talk to visitors at the Museum of Jewish Heritage downtown in observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. 10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. [$12]

- The mayor also speaks at a Holocaust remembrance ceremony at Lincoln Square Synagogue on Amsterdam Avenue. 8 p.m.

- Readings of plays from five continents open the week-long Pen World Voices Festival at CUNY’s Segal Theater in Midtown. 2 p.m. [Free]

- A panel on poverty past and present at the Tenement Museum, moderated by the Times columnist Ginia Bellafante. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- Readings from the essay collection “The Opposite of Loneliness” by Marina Keegan, a young writer who died in a car crash, at BookCourt in Brooklyn. 7 p.m. [Free]

- A concert by the Shanghai Quartet at Advent Lutheran Church on the Upper West Side. 7:30 p.m. [Free]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

IN THE NEWS

- Physical therapists in Brooklyn are among the leading recipients of national Medicare dollars. [New York Times]

- A proposed city law would ban businesses from asking job applicants about their criminal records until after a job offer is made. [Daily News]

- A smuggler of illegal immigrants who died in prison was mourned as a folk hero in Chinatown. [New York Times]

- New York’s state poet chose her favorites from the more than 2,800 haiku about the city submitted by Times readers. [New York Times]

- Double rainbows were spotted (and photographed) above the city over the weekend. [Gothamist]

- Scoreboard: Rangers upend Flyers, 4-2, need one win to clinch. Nets succumb to Raptors, 87-79. Yankees edge Angels, 3-2. Mets harpoon Marlins, 4-0.

AND FINALLY …

This week in 1972, Mayor John V. Lindsay wrote a letter to Washington on behalf of an immigrant couple who faced deportation.

Their removal, the mayor wrote, would be contrary “to the principles of our country” and amount to “a grave injustice.”

The couple’s problems stemmed from the fact that one of them had pleaded guilty to marijuana possession in his native country.

His name was John Lennon.

Other prominent figures petitioned immigration authorities in support of Lennon and Yoko Ono.

“Artisans and universal megagalactic entities,” wrote the poet Gregory Corso. “Ergo, let my people go â€" stay â€" etc.”

Proceedings dragged on for years, but the Lennons, of course, remained in New York.

Benjamin Weiser and Sandra E. Garcia contributed reporting.

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