"Lawyers for the city and for Concilio will sue the newspaper and the social worker and the person who was a foster [parent]," Williams told the foster parents, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "The sentence could be five to 10 years in jail."
When informed of the letter, DHS spokeswoman Alicia Taylor said: "The commissioner did not write a letter like this. She knows nothing about it."
Repeated calls and e-mails from the Daily News seeking comment were not returned by Concilio executive director Joanna Otero-Cruz or board president Tony Valdes.
"What this sounds like is a massive campaign of fear and intimidation by an agency [Concilio] that has shown itself to have failed miserably," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform.
"Being forced to sign gag orders while allegedly being told that somebody who spoke out is going to jail - if that's what they're saying - that's a scare tactic," Wexler said.
City spokesman Douglas Oliver said that the foster mother had violated HIPAA by revealing confidential information about her charge.
Several attorneys familiar with HIPAA, the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a federal law regarding the privacy of medical records, said that a violation could be pursued only by the feds and that the women who spoke with the paper would never see a day behind bars in this case.
"Criminal sanctions? I doubt it very much," said a lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Who's going to prosecute that? They are not going to get a U.S. attorney to prosecute that."
