On October 16, New York mayor Eric Adams sounded confident—but then again, he almost always does. Fresh off a press conference celebrating the destruction of 1,246 pounds of illegal vapes, the head of the nation’s largest city was approached by a reporter for Fox 5 New York. “Your legal defense fund,” the reporter began. “You seem to be spending more than you’re receiving. Are you concerned at all?”

“Nope,” Adams replied curtly, before being shuffled by his security into a black SUV.

In retrospect, perhaps he shouldn’t have answered so quickly, or definitively. Adams, under investigation since 2023 and indicted in 2024 by the Southern District of New York for wire fraud, bribery and campaign finance violations, has racked up over $2.5 million in legal bills fighting the allegations. But the trust he set up to help him cover the costs, which can accept donations of up to $5,000, has only taken in about $1.6 million, according to its latest public filings. That leaves Adams $900,000 in the hole. And while Donald Trump’s Department of Justice moved to drop the charges (sparking allegations of a dubious quid pro quo and notable resignations at City Hall), a judge has yet to approve the dismissal, meaning Adams isn’t off the hook yet and will likely be facing more bills.

For someone with a bigger or more liquid fortune, $900,000 might not be difficult to cover. But Adams’ at least $3.5 million in personal assets, according to Forbes’ estimates, are made up almost entirely of three New York-area real estate holdings—two in Brooklyn and one in Fort Lee, New Jersey—plus two pensions from a lifetime in the public sector. He co-owns two of the homes: The NJ co-op is shared with his current partner, Tracey Collins, and a former girlfriend (reportedly) Sylvia Cowan owns part of the Brooklyn apartment. That makes selling them more complicated. The third, a Bed-Stuy brownstone, is the asset that is most likely available to help bail him out. Adams borrowed $360,000 to buy the four-story building for $250,000 in 2003 and (presumably) renovate it. Forbes estimates that the place—which Adams subdivided and now rents out, earning him up to $55,000 annually, according to his disclosure—is worth almost $2 million today. And despite his mounting legal bills, Adams found the cash to pay off the remaining debt on the property in late 2024, meaning it’s not only debt-free but something he can borrow against.

His sole liquid holding that we know of is a small stash of Bitcoin worth between $5,000 and $55,000, according to his latest financial disclosure, which only requires him to declare asset values in a range. He may have more cash in checking or savings accounts, which New York Conflict of Interest Board executive director Carolyn Miller confirmed is not required to be disclosed. All in all, Forbes estimates that Adams is worth at least $2.5 million—after accounting for what he owes his lawyers. (A spokesperson for the mayor’s office declined to comment, directing Forbes to his financial disclosures, and did not respond to a follow-up inquiry about any cash accounts. Cowan did not reply to a request for comment about the apartment they co-own together.)

It’s a fortune that his younger self could have only dreamed of. Born in 1960 in Brooklyn, Adams’ official biography notes that his mother, a housecleaner and cook, raised him alone under constant threat of eviction. His father, who was a butcher, was apparently not around. Over the years, he’s told numerous stories about his youth—including that as a young teen he was whacked in the head by a nail-studded bat during a gang fight and that a few years later, at age 17, he worked as a “squeegee man.” According to a 2021 profile in The Atlantic by Juan Williams, who has known the mayor for years, Adams, who was then 15, tried to steal money from a sex worker friend he’d run errands for while she had a broken leg. The police caught him and beat him mercilessly until, in Adams’ telling, a Black officer intervened. “This Black guy was able to go among those white guys and stop this,” Adams told Williams. “He got juice—J­-U-I-C-E, as the kids would say.”

Adams wanted some of that juice for himself. So after he graduated from high school in 1978, he went on to get a criminal justice degree from John Jay College. By 1984, he’d graduated from the Police Academy, kicking off a 22-year career in law enforcement.

He started at the Transit Police, which merged with the NYPD in 1995. That same year, Adams co-founded a group called 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care that advocated for police reform. He eventually rose to the rank of captain but left the force in 2006, after being disciplined for criticizing the Bloomberg administration.

After leaving the NYPD, Adams won a seat in the New York state senate that came with a $79,500 salary, almost certainly a step down from what he was making as a cop. He served for seven years, then returned to the city to become Brooklyn borough president in 2014. That job doubled his income to $160,000 annually and set him up for citywide prominence. In addition to his salary, his over two decades on the police force secured him a pension that pays out between $60,000 and $100,000 annually, per his financial disclosures.

In November 2020, he announced a mayoral bid, citing ineffective government, inequality, rising crime and police brutality as central issues. He won, moved into Gracie Mansion and started collecting his $260,000 annual salary, but the race brought up questions about his properties. One local NYC publication called The City discovered that, though Adams had maintained for years that he had transferred his half of an apartment in Brooklyn to the “friend” with whom he had bought it, he actually still owned it with her, and in fact had even disrupted a sale. Afterwards, Adams refiled five years of disclosures to reflect that he still owns 50% of the apartment. (Adams has blamed his friend for not filing paperwork properly.) Additionally, multiple media outlets raised questions about whether Adams actually lived in his brownstone in Brooklyn—or whether he really lives in the two-bedroom condo in Fort Lee, New Jersey that he and his partner bought in 2016, which if true would have disqualified him from being mayor. Adams even gave reporters a tour of the brownstone to try and dispel the rumors.

It’s been a rocky mayoral tenure, marked by an uneven post-pandemic recovery, a homelessness crisis and allegations of corruption that led to his indictment in September. If and when he leaves office when his term is up this year—which looks likely, given that he is trailing in the polls and is already facing a wide field that includes former New York governor Andrew Cuomo—he’ll be okay, financially speaking: His time heading Brooklyn and the city has earned him a pension that Forbes estimates will pay out over $4,000 monthly, on top of at least $5,000 a month from his police pension.

Adams is, as always, projecting confidence about his odds. At a press conference Monday, he largely dismissed Cuomo’s entry into the race and defended his record. “I don’t think there’s ever been a mayor that had to deal with so much noise,” he said. “And what happens when you’re faced with, not only professional crisis, but personal crisis? Do you step down or do you step up? What have I done? I stepped up. I delivered for the city.”