A city inspector has admitted in federal court that he did not perform any tests of asbestos and lead contamination in hundreds of reports in which he said he found no danger, according to the lead front page article by William K. Rashbaum in yesterday's edition of The New York Times.

The article said that the inspector, Saverio F. Todaro submitted test results for "well over 200 buildings and apartments, including some that were demolished or renovated to make way for publicly financed projects under the Bloomberg administration's affordable-housing program, according to people briefed on the matter and court papers."

"The number of potential victims of Mr. Todaro's fraud, which spanned at least a decade," the article continued, "loomed so large that the Manhattan United States attorney's office, which is prosecuting the case, created a separate Web page to comply with a law requiring it to notify victims....'Todaro's guilty plea is not the end of the story,' said the Manhattan United States attorney, Preet Bharara. 'This investigation is very much ongoing.'"

Federal and city officials have not made public the precise number and locations of the involved buildings, according to the article and a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that city regulators have found no evidence that either the fraud or risks are widespread.

Mr. Todaro, who is 68, is free on bail and pleaded guilty to mail fraud, making false statements and violating the Toxic Substances Control Act. "The city's environmental agency suspended Mr. Todaro's license in 2004 for improper building surveys and poor recordkeeping, it failed to notify the other city agencies for which he did asbestos related work, as well as state and federal regulators - lapses that allowed him to evade additional scrutiny....The environmental agency focuses its force of 15 inspectors on the roughly 5,000 projects where asbestos abatement is being done every year."