Who really ran Con Sofrito, the restaurant frequented by Eric Adams and NYPD top brass?

A week before Christmas 2022, a Border Patrol agent stopped a Dodge pickup on Route 243 in North Troy, Vermont, a village of a few hundred residents about a mile south of the Canadian border. In the back sat a man earlier seen fleeing through the dark snowy woods near a customs checkpoint, the final stretch of an 8,000-mile odyssey that had taken him from his native Albania through Macedonia and Switzerland to Toronto, where he claimed to have paid strangers $5,000 to smuggle him into the United States. 

The driver was a restaurateur who public records show had shared control of a Bronx establishment the previous year with the brother of NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban.

According to the criminal complaint against the migrant-running businessman, Muhamet “Mike” Demaj, the North Troy area had been “used extensively by Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO) in the preceding months to smuggle people into, and transport them within the United States,” particularly “ethnic Albanians” like Demaj himself. Authorities had intercepted Demaj the prior April transporting two other undocumented arrivals from the small Balkan nation, and legal filings note that vehicles he had rented repeatedly showed up in surveillance footage from a nearby road that March, even though Demaj lived some six hours distant in Yonkers.

In custody, Demaj’s passenger revealed that he had hoped to reach New York, where his brother awaited. He also alleged his chauffeur had threatened him moments before their apprehension.

“My people know where you are and what you do,” the migrant recalled Demaj telling him. “If you say you know me, we will have different problems.”

Demaj pleaded guilty to federal charges in August 2023 and received three years’ probation in February of this year. But his plea agreement and all memoranda related to his sentencing remain under seal. Efforts to reach him via phone, email and his lawyers proved unsuccessful.

The tangle with Border Patrol and the Justice Department was not Demaj’s first brush with law enforcement. In 2018, the NYPD ran an underage drinking sting on his restaurant Acri Cafe, which sat on an otherwise industrial corner of Parkchester in the Bronx.

Acri’s address, 1315 Commerce Avenue, is now known as Con Sofrito – the recently shuttered eatery belonging to Richard Caban, brother of the city’s top cop. It was a favorite hangout for Bronx politicians, the venue for Mayor Eric Adams’ 2023 birthday bash, and the target of a State Liquor Authority investigation earlier this year. And social media accounts and public records City & State uncovered show that Caban and Demaj’s enterprises blurred into each other in the period they operated out of the same space, potentially violating state liquor codes. 

There is presently no evidence Richard Caban, unlike his other brother James – who is reportedly under investigation for operating as a “fixer” for police-troubled nightclubs – is entangled in the federal probe that brought a raid upon the NYPD commissioner last week. Neither of the lawman’s siblings answered requests for comment.

But Demaj is just one of two figures tied to the venue haunted by legal difficulties: The other is Jaime “Jimmy” Rodriguez, the founder of late, legendary Boogie Down destination Jimmy’s Bronx Cafe. Though never himself charged with wrongdoing, Rodriguez lost two of his prior businesses to drug busts, and his eponymous eatery was allegedly so rife with “unsavory characters” and narcotics in the 1990s that Major League Baseball warned players against visiting it.

As The City previously revealed, Richard Caban’s name appears alone on Con Sofrito’s liquor license, yet Rodriguez has consistently depicted himself online as the hangout’s “creator,” and he is ubiquitous in media posted to its Instagram and Facebook accounts. 

The politically wired serial entrepreneur enjoyed a similar relationship with Acri Cafe and Demaj. Questions City & State left at phone numbers and email accounts associated with Rodriguez concerning his role at both businesses and his relationship with their owners received no reply. 

The settlement Acri Cafe reached with the city in February 2019 obligated it to inform the NYPD’s Civil Enforcement Unit if it sought to “sell, assign, or sublease its existing rights

in the subject premises” within the next year. The department told City & State it never received any such notice.

In September of that year, Demaj personally appeared before Bronx Community Board 10 to seek a renewal of Acri’s soon-to-expire liquor license. But in November, Rodriguez made multiple posts to Facebook referring to Acri, which had been in business since 2015, as “my newest restaurant.”

A new page for Acri Cafe launched on the social network that same month, showcasing Rodriguez’s signature Puerto Rican cuisine –  a shift from the Italian fare Acri previously served. But at no time did Acri Cafe file any paperwork indicating its ownership had changed.

Mark Stumer, an attorney specializing in liquor license law, said that if Rodriguez was in fact a partial owner of either Acri Cafe or Con Sofrito, it could constitute an “undisclosed principal” violation of state regulations. However, determining that for certain would require opening both restaurants’ books.

"Either he does own it and he's not disclosed to the liquor authority, or he's a big talker,” said Stumer, who City & State provided with details but not the names of figures involved. “If he's being paid a set salary as a consultant, that's fine. But if you see different amounts going to him every week or every month, that would look like profit-sharing.”

In January 2020, Richard Caban incorporated 1315 Restaurant Group, and within weeks the new entity went before Community Board 10 as part of the liquor license application process. 

But Caban did not immediately receive the license. Rather, the State Liquor Authority in February renewed Acri Cafe’s permit, which remained solely in the name of Demaj and another Albanian American.

And it remained so even after Demaj and Acri Cafe signed over the property’s lease, along with “all receipts, profits and revenues” deriving therefrom, to Caban and his 1315 Restaurant Group in August. In the weeks preceding the transfer, Acri Cafe obtained a five-year Small Business Administration loan (which does not appear to have been part of the Paycheck Protection Program); yet another Facebook account for Acri Cafe materialized; and Demaj made his first-ever political contribution to a candidate for city office: $250 to Adams. 

Curiously, Demaj – who for years had identified himself in public statements and court documents as Acri’s owner – demoted himself in the donation’s description to the establishment’s “manager.”

Yet it wouldn’t be until the next spring that Richard Caban obtained even a temporary liquor license to operate the premises at 1315 Commerce Avenue himself. For nearly eight months, a period in which Instagram posts attest that Acri continued to serve alcoholic beverages, Richard Caban’s company controlled the location while Demaj’s held the liquor license. 

The SLA told City & State that Acri failed to notify the governing agency of the lease deal with Caban, as state regulations mandate. Stumer, the liquor license attorney, said arrangements like these – and the failure to disclose them – are not unheard of in the industry because of the drawn-out processes for acquiring and updating licenses.

But such deals violate regulatory requirements that a licensee maintain “exclusive control of the premises,” without any other enterprise operating in its space.

“The assignor is violating the law because he's operating in a premises where he doesn't have the lease,” Stumer said. “But the biggest issue is the money. Where did the money go?"

On April 19, 2021, SLA records show Acri Cafe liquidated its alcohol inventory and transferred it to 1315 Restaurant Group, which that same day acquired an interim pouring permit. Con Sofrito launched its own Facebook page days afterward – but Acri’s social media accounts remained active, tagging its photos and videos at Con Sofrito.

These included pictures from Rodriguez’s birthday party that September, which photos show that Adams and all three Caban brothers attended, along with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

Acri also posted a profusion of photos of NYPD brass and union leaders at 1315 Commerce Avenue when the location hosted the NYPD Hispanic Association gala that October.

In fact, Acri’s twin Facebook accounts continued to regularly upload images of food and inspirational messages right up until March 2023 – that is, two months after Demaj’s arraignment on migrant-smuggling charges.

There is other public evidence that Acri continued to conduct business even after Richard Caban obtained the liquor license for 1315 Commerce Avenue. In February 2022, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance lodged a $27,604.22 uncollected sales tax warrant against the cafe. Unpaid, it has since bloated to $34,111.60. Meanwhile, state Uniform Commercial Code filings show the federal loan Acri obtained just before signing over the lease to Con Sofrito remains open. It comes due in July 2025.