A trail of tears

If you thought the Indian Wars ended at Wounded Knee in 1890, you haven’t been following the many suits and criminal cases involving the Poospatuck of Mastic and the Shinnecocks of Southampton.
These tribes have been battling for years for legitimacy. Some courts have deemed them authentic Indian Nations, or given a go-ahead [...]

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Kobi fires back … from Namibia, of course

And the Kobi Alexander story gets stranger. The former chief executive of Comverse Technology, who fled to the African country of Namibia to avoid being arrested and charged with corporate fraud for his role in a stock-backdating scheme, is suing the company he founded. Alexander, in the suit, alleges Comverse owes him $72 million in [...]

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Crime keeps falling on the east side of LI

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy is starting his second term on a high note. The politician this week bragged that the county has experienced a 10.97 percent drop in crime during the last four years (Levy’s first term).
Further singing his county’s praises, Levy said he was able to keep crime at bay without spending too [...]

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Sex offenders banned from emergency shelters

The Suffolk County Legislature yesterday afternoon passed a bill sponsored by Legis. Kate Browning that prevents sex offenders from accessing general public emergency shelters in the case of a disaster.
Instead, registered sex offenders will be directed to shelters for fellow convicts.
Browning has said the bill was created in response to the sex attacks that happened [...]

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This news is for the dogs

Why bother writing a witty and irreverent intro to an announcement as zany as this since the writer of the following press release has given us so much to chuckle at.
We’ll just say, congrats Cinder.
The release:
After 56 (human) years of service, Suffolk County Fire Marshal dog “Cinder” will be given a retirement send-off Monday at [...]

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Spota cracks car-theft ring

Suffolk County District Attorney Tom Spota’s latest sting, aimed at a local car-theft, has led to 22 arrests and has unearthed all sorts of bad business including one suspect, a local mechanic, who allegedly copied customers’ keys so he could steal their cars later.
From the Daily News story:
A Long Island car-theft sting has led to [...]

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The protector dream team

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-Garden City, is hard on gun-toting criminals. It’s part of her public identity. And as for John Walsh, host of America’s Most Wanted, well, he’s another tough cookie when it comes to fighting crime.
So it makes sense the two would come together.
McCarthy, who is chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Healthy Families and [...]

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Manger watch: Levy guards holiday displays

While a holiday display, be it a nativity scene, a larger-than-life menorah or a Festivus pole, can bring warm feelings to the grateful, seeing these displays vandalized by callous morons can put one’s holiday cheer in a headlock.
But worry not, Steve Levy is on the case. The Suffolk County executive, along with county Police Commissioner [...]

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Our podcast returns, thank goodness

It’s back, our famous weekly podcast, LI Bizcast.
In this edition, Gregory Zeller joins the podcast with a report on one local cab company’s decision to exclude registered sex offenders from working behind the wheel. Find out what the legal community has to say about that.
Next, real estate ace David Winzelberg reports on the new plans [...]

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Criminal? Or doing a thankless job?

While Long Islanders were out voting incumbent town supervisors back into office, Steve Levy county executive again and Republicans into the majority on Brookhaven’s town board, Peter Guardino was doing his Election Day good deed.
And he was breaking the law.
The 20-year-old man was arrested last night for collecting 220 election signs. His motive is still [...]

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Bat-man heads to anger management

It was the most attention Atlantic League baseball received … ever, when Jose Offerman went on a bat-wielding head-hunting attack in Bridgeport and was later arrested. He pleaded “not guilty” to the attack about a month ago, but yesterday the bat came down on him.
Offerman was given probation, and he was ordered to attend anger [...]

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And they took his shotgun too

The Empire News Service put out a bulletin this morning on Frank Lobacz, a Bayport man who is charged with federal tax evasion. According to the brief, Lobacz told the Internal Revenue Service that his annual income was $353,893. But, in reality, his annual income was $3.1 million, meaning he defrauded the feds out of [...]

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Brooks is busted … belatedly

It seems like the book cooking that went on at former Westbury body armor maker DHB Industries happened ages ago. Last year, former chief executive David Brooks was kicked out of the company, which later moved its operations to Florida. However, there were still many of us who were waiting for the Feds to scoop [...]

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Photographers by day, scammers by night

Two Long Island men running a photography studio in Plainview have been arrested on charges they ran a hedge fund scam in their off hours.
From the Fin Alternatives story:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says that David Lagone and his cousin, Kenneth Lampasona, defrauded investors in their hedge-fund-cum-Ponzi-scheme of $500,000.
According to yesterday’s indictment, the duo’s L2Q3 [...]

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Something stinks in North Hempstead

Corruption and bribery, these aren’t the words we like associated with public officials. Though, it seems they often are on Long Island.
Former North Hempstead building commissioner David Wasserman was indicted Monday night on charges he took bribes from developers in return for falsifying building permits and certificates of occupancy.
In addition, Nassau County District Attorney [...]

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Tanger’s peeping Tom caught

A 63-year-old man has been arrested for putting a video camera in the fitting room at the Jockey outlet in Riverhead.
Can you tell LI Biz Blog, what is the matter with people?
From the NBC story:
A man has been arrested for allegedly putting a camera in a changing room of a store at a Long Island [...]

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Crazy Duck pleads not guilty

Jose Offerman of the Long Island Ducks, who made headlines months ago when he went on a bat-wielding rampage during a game, pleaded not guilty today to charges that he struck the opposing pitcher and a catcher with the bat.
Offerman’s attorney said the player does not believe he hit anybody with the bat.
But be that [...]

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Did you get a Gibson in Oakdale?

Gibson, it’s a major name in the world of guitars. But if you bought one in Oakdale recently, it might just be a fake.
Bernard Musumeci, owner of the Oakdale Music Store was arrested Tuesday and charged will selling counterfeit guitars. He allegedly was placing Gibson stickers on non-Gibson guitars.
Nashville, Tenn.-based Gibson apparently tipped off the [...]

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Homeless man arrested in Top Chef assault

One of the young people who attacked Josie Smith-Malave, a former contestant on Bravo’s Top Chef program, was arrested. He’s a 20-year-old homeless man from Oregon. He is the only attacker to be arrested so far.
Smith-Malave was kicked out a a bar in Sea Cliff over the Labor Day weekend. The openly gay chef was [...]

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Schumer sends forensic funds to Suffolk

Nothing is worse than a backlog of DNA samples. It stinks on television (CSI, NCIS, Bones, etc.) and it stinks in real life.
Thankfully New York Sen. Charles Schumer ust announced that $203,350 has been awarded to Suffolk County by the U.S. Department of Justice. The money, which comes from the federal department’s Forensic Casework DNA [...]

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Celebrity chef attacked in Sea Cliff

Give me a break.
Josie Smith-Malave, a former contestant on the Bravo network’s cooking reality show Top Chef, was reportedly the victim of a hate crime over the Labor Day holiday weekend.
Smith-Malave visited Partners Bar in Sea Cliff with her sister and was allegedly escorted out by bar employees because patrons were unsettled by the [...]

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They can’t get Kobi, but they got his cash

Will Kobi Alexander ever get extradited from Namibia? That is uncertain, but U.S. authorities aren’t empty handed when it comes to the maligned former chief executive of Comverse Technology.
U.S. authorities will seize about $50 million from two bank accounts held by Alexander, despite the fugitive’s bid to stop them. The government claims the cash comes [...]

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Oldest profession, newest technology

They came to Long Island to sell sex … online.
Nassau County just cracked a minor prostitution ring made up of women selling their skills on popular online classifieds Web Site Craigslist.org.
The county found the eight women as part of its recent monitoring of the Web site, which has become a haven for soliciting sex, specifically [...]

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Lifeguards must air their dirty swimsuits

Background checks are common for about every job now, though lifeguards have eluded the probing for a while.
Not any more.
Because 33 Long Island lifeguards failed in 2005 to disclose prior criminal convictions, new applicants will be subject to background checks, according to an Associated Press story.
From the story:
The inspector general’s office discovered the 33 cases [...]

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Idiots invade Huntington

Apparently at least one imbecile fell through the cracks at a top-notch Long Island school system.
Cops are searching for the perp or perps who thought it would be amusing to paint an absurd, violent message on the side of the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington. The graffiti, written on the side of the [...]

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This crook is one major bird-brain

Parrots of the World, a pet shop in Rockville Centre, was robbed Tuesday morning, and it wasn’t cash the thief was after.
The culprit ran off with 45 parrots, a score worth $58,000.
From the Associated Press story:
Police on Long Island say the bird thief broke in through a back window in the morning, before the owner [...]

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Kumar goes to jail today

Though he won’t be bunking on Rikers Island, the defamed former head for Computer Associates, Sanjay Kumar, will head to prison today to begin serving a 12-year sentence for accounting fraud.
Kumar will be housed at minimum security prison the Fairton Correctional Institution in Fairton N.J.
His lawyer said the appeal process is just getting started and [...]

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Alleged crook Kobi still safe in Namibia

Namibia likes fugitive Kobi Alexander too much to let him go.
The former chief executive of Comverse Technology finagled another delay for his extradition hearing this morning because he wants a different judge to preside over the case.
Kobi fled the United States before he could be arrested for illegally backdating millions of executive stock options, and [...]

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Enviro-cops loosed on LI

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will assign nine new Environmental Conservation Police Officers to Long Island to patrol the region in search of environmental criminals.
The nine ECOs graduated on July 13 from the DEC law-enforcement academy upstate in Fulton, N.Y. They focus on enforcing regulations involving the illegal dumping of hazardous waste, [...]

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Chase branch robbed in Lindenhurst

On Monday, the Chase bank branch located at 166 S. Wellwood Ave. in Lindenhurst was robbed by a man who said he had a bomb and threatened to blow the bank up.
From the Empire News Service brief:

A man entered the bank, approached a teller and demanded cash and threatened to kill by detonating an explosive [...]

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