Ex-DA's Al Pirro threatens workers in 'restaurant rage'

You talkin’ to me?

Al Pirro — the estranged hubby of former Westchester DA Jeanine Pirro — went berserk at a tony Scarsdale restaurant over the weekend, throwing a punch at a waiter and drunkenly threatening to bump off the entire staff, sources told The Post.

“You don’t know who the f--k we are! I’m going to have you all killed!’’ Al Pirro allegedly screamed during the Saturday-night fracas, the sources said yesterday.

Pirro — who did 17 months in federal prison for tax fraud and fathered a love child while married to the glamorous prosecutor — showed up with a gal pal and four other couples at the restaurant Massa at about 9 p.m., the sources said.

“They were already drunk when they got there. [Waiters] were killing them with kindness,” said a source, adding that the table ordered three bottles and five glasses of wine along with about a dozen mixed drinks.

But as the party wound down, one of Pirro’s boozed-up buddies couldn’t find his cellphone — and accused restaurant staffers of swiping it, the sources said.

“I lost a phone, and I think one of your waiters might’ve stole it,” the pal slurred to a staffer, who denied any theft, the sources said.

“That’s when the guy yells, really loud, ‘What, are you, f--king stupid? I’ll kick your f--king ass! Come outside, if you’re a real man!’ ” a source said.

Diners sat dumbfounded amid the upscale eatery’s farmhouse decor, which aims for the atmosphere of a hideaway in the Italian countryside.

Staffers managed to calm the irate diner, and the man apologized and walked outside to join Pirro, 64, and the others.

But then one of the liquored-up ladies started screaming, “You motherf--ker! You son of a bitch!” causing tempers to flare anew, and Pirro barreled back inside for Round 2, the sources said.

“Pirro came in like a maniac, charging, yelling, ‘I’ll f--king kill you, you don’t know who the f--k you’re dealing with!’ ” and punched a waiter in the chest, they said.

The sources said waiters and other staffers got into a tense standoff with the portly Pirro and his pie-eyed pals, who were all yelling curses and threats at that point — including the women.

“It was like a scene from the ‘Mob Wives.’ . . . They were just belligerent and drunk. They were all acting like idiots,’’ a source said.

At one point, a waiter said to Pirro, “Back up, or I’ll break your nose,’’ the source added.

“It was funny because at the end, you’re grown men, you’re acting like this, like a schoolyard thing,” the source said. “And Pirro got worse when his friends were holding him back. People were laughing, saying, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ”

Al Pirro — who heads up the Pirro Group, a business and real-estate consulting and lobbying firm — did not immediately return calls or an e-mail seeking comment; nor did his lawyer.

Jeanine Pirro also did not return a call for comment.

Al Pirro married Jeanine in 1975, but the couple separated in 2007 after 32 years of marriage.

Ari Halberstam's Killer Admits: Jews Were My Target

Rashid Baz has admitted his shooting attack was racially motivated

Scene of the 1995 Brooklyn Bridge shooting that killed Yeshiva student Ari Halberstam

The livery driver whose two-gun attack on a group of Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge shocked the city 18 years ago has finally admitted that he targeted them because they were Jewish, The Post has learned.

Rashid Baz was convicted in 1995 of murdering Yeshiva student Ari Halberstam, 16, and trying to kill more than a dozen others in a van with a hail of bullets he fired on a Manhattan approach to the bridge on March 1, 1994.

Baz initially told cops he opened fire because of a traffic dispute. But in 2007 Baz finally confessed that he targeted his victims, tailing their van for about two miles before the shooting, an admission that had never been made public until now.

Since Baz is already serving a minimum of 141 years in state prison, authorities believe there is no reason to pursue hate-crime or other new charges, law-enforcement sources said.

Detectives never believed Baz’s traffic-dispute defense but discounted the widely spread rumors that he was part of a terror-linked conspiracy.

During a five-week trial, Baz’s lawyer claimed the shooter suffered serious trauma while growing up during the Lebanese civil war and was suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder at the time of the slaying.

But in his confession years later, Baz said he first saw the van outside the Manhattan Eye and Ear Infirmary, on East 14th Street, where Lubavitcher spiritual leader Rabbi Menachem Schneerson was undergoing minor surgery.

He said he followed the van and targeted the occupants because of an earlier West Bank attack by Israeli settlers on Muslims. Asked if he would have shot at a van of black or Latino people, he told the investigators, “No, I only shot them because they were Jewish.”

Baz fired two guns, blowing out one of the windows of his blue Chevrolet. Then he drove calmly back to his car-service headquarters in Brooklyn and told co-workers he had shot up the van for no particular reason.

The other occupants of the van, including two who were critically wounded, survived.

A year later, the bridge’s southbound ramp was renamed the Ari Halberstam Ramp.

Ponzi Scheme is still alive

No matter how many tough securities laws are passed, or how many “messages” are sent by zealous prosecutors or how many pious pronouncements are made by regulators, a Madoff-type scandal will inevitably happen again. That’s the warning of a veteran of the securities industry.

“Wall Street is a cesspool, and nothing has really changed since Madoff,” says Bill Singer, a longtime securities attorney with Herskovits PLLC.

Singer, who has some 30 years in the securities industry, says regulators and prosecutors are frequently unrealistic about human nature.

“Just after the Madoff sentencing happened, I was asked by a television journalist if this didn’t send a message, if this wouldn’t discourage more fraud from happening,” Singer said. He told the journalist it wouldn’t.

“There are people on Wall Street, even as Madoff was sentenced, who were saying that they could have pulled off what Madoff did and not get caught,” according to Singer.

Singer’s comments come in the wake of a consultant’s report that argued the threat of massive fraud remains.

The Tabb Group, a New York-based market consulting and advisory firm, cites in a recent report two reasons the spirit of Madoff continues in the securities business: In 2011, the FBI launched about 1,000 inquiries into possible fraud schemes, and the Securities and Exchange Commission has been ramping up its probes of companies and institutions suspected of fraud.

“These two tidbits of information would suggest that even in the aftermath of the largest Ponzi scheme ever seen, investors and institutions must remain aware that fraud is still prevalent,” according to Joel Cohen of Kinetic Partners, the author of the report.

Cohen’s firm is a professional advisory services firm that investigates for fraud through its forensic accounting services.

Most of Singer’s contemporaries aren’t nearly as outspoken about the securities industry. Nevertheless, most of them privately concede that his prediction is essentially correct.

Opportunities to cheat are increasing because the speed and sophistication of markets are themselves increasing, explains Alexander Tabb, a partner with the Tabb Group.

“Markets are moving at nanosecond speeds. Trading now is going on in multiasset categories, and there are now more rules. And that means it is more difficult to enforce these rules,” Tabb says.

Tabb adds that, since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act, there are now many more rules to enforce.

And the further one moves from a scandal, industry observers say, the more likely it is to recur, as memories dim.

“People have short-term memories,” Cohen says. “Right after the Madoff scandals broke, they focused on implementing a robust infrastructure with internal controls and compliance. Now I see some of them going back to their old ways.”

The lesson for investors and officials of financial firms, professionals say, is don’t depend on others. Do one’s own due diligence.

“I’d like to say never again,” Cohen says of the Madoff scam. “But the SEC is often overburdened and has a lot on its plate.”

Madoff Moneyman Ezra Merkin Near $400 Million AG Deal

Madoff feeder funder Ezra Merkin is close to ponying up $400M in a settlement with the New York attorney general

After a bitter three-year legal battle, Ezra Merkin, the Manhattan moneyman who funneled more than $2 billion to convicted Ponzi king Bernie Madoff, is nearing a settlement with the New York attorney general that could have him shell out as much as $400 million, The Post has learned.

Sources said the settlement with AG Eric Schneiderman would recover the bulk of the $470 million in fees the notorious middleman pocketed from investing his clients’ cash with Madoff.

Schneiderman has pursued a civil suit brought in 2009 by then-AG Andrew Cuomo against Merkin, charging him with misleading clients by telling them he invested their money when he was turning it over to Madoff.

It’s unclear exactly when an accord will be announced, but sources said that Merkin’s attorneys, led by Andrew Levander, have been telling people they’re “closer than ever” to a settlement.

One fly in the ointment, however, may be striking a deal with Madoff bankruptcy trustee Irving Picard, who is seeking to recover some $500 million in money that Merkin withdrew from Madoff’s fund.

“The AG has a deal with [Merkin], but the problem is working something out with Irving Picard,” said one person familiar with the talks. “Picard is not being all that cooperative. I know the AG and [Merkin’s] lawyers are very frustrated. Picard’s been holding everyone up.”

Merkin, 58, who has been assailed by a raft of lawsuits from burned investors in his so-called feeder funds, wants a sweeping accord that would end his legal wrangling with both the AG’s office and Picard, sources said.

Schneiderman could still settle with Merkin, leaving the financier to haggle with Picard, they added.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office declined to comment, as did a spokeswoman for Picard.

A spokesman for Levander, Merkin’s attorney, also declined comment.

A settlement could offer some solace to hundreds of Merkin investors seeking to recover funds lost to Madoff’s scheme. Merkin has been hit with a string of lawsuits and arbitrations by individual investors, but has made relatively few payouts despite the growing number of verdicts against him.

Meanwhile, Merkin — once a respected philanthropist who was forced to step down as an officer of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue, a wealthy congregation founded by his father — has held on to his billionaire lifestyle.

Merkin resides in an 18-room duplex at one of New York’s poshest addresses at 740 Park Ave. that is worth $20 million. He also owns prime beachfront property in Atlantic Beach worth $1.5 million.

Merkin might have to auction off more assets to pay for a potential $400 million settlement. His assets have been frozen by the AG’s office and he was forced to sell a collection of Mark Rothko paintings that fetched $310 million.

Roughly $190 million of the proceeds from the Rothko sale, after taxes, are being held in escrow by the AG and could go toward the settlement.

1 Hour & $260 Can Get You Phony Green Card, SS & Driver's License

FAKE-ID ‘EPICENTER’: “Charlie,” “Angel” and a Post reporter await the delivery of fake IDs on a street corner in Jackson Heights, where officials believe at least 10 identity-card forgery mills operate

The Post’s Candice Giove bought a driver’s license, Social Security card and green card, all for $260

The following is from the NY Post, about how a reporter purchased a set of ID’s for just $260 – in just one hour:

In just one hour, The Post was able to buy a phony green card, Social Security card and New York state driver’s license from a stranger on a corner — all of which could serve as a gateway to obtain legitimate IDs.

The cards are frighteningly real — convincing enough to fool creditors, potential employers and security at buildings and even the airport.

Midday on Roosevelt and Forley Street, I asked a man in a leather jacket leaning against a shuttered electronics-store gate if he knew where I could get an ID.

He was the first person I approached, and I was already in business.

You need an ID? What kind?” he asked.

A green card.”

Follow me.”

It was that easy.

The negotiation happened off the main strip, near private homes.

He offered a package deal: green and Social Security cards for $160. A driver’s license from New York, New Jersey or Connecticut would run another $130, he said. I haggled him down to $260 from $290.

He said to meet in an hour, half-way down a different residential street.

“It’s good for you. It’s good for me,” he said. “Too many cops.”

Next, he took me to a discount cellphone shop that printed ID pictures. I paid $6 for two passport-size rectangles.

The stranger handed me a tiny manila envelope and told me to write out my name, birth date, country of origin and address.

Use a fake one if you want.”

I decided to be Canadian.

He programmed my digits into his phone and called me on the spot. “Candice,” he said.

Well, what’s your name?”

Charlie,” he said. “Could you leave me 20 bucks?”

Charlie picked out a cafe for me to pass the time in until he returned, and when I told him I was headed to a coffee joint on 88th Street instead, he forbade it because of the police.

Do not go there,” he said emphatically. “Too hot. Go to 82nd Street.”

I did not look back at Charlie, fearing he’d think I was a cop. He was about to pass my manila envelope to a runner who would deliver it to a hidden ID forgery mill.

An hour later, Charlie called and ordered me to rendezvous on Forley instead, again with a warning about cops.

He arrived with a bearded friend he called “Angel.” They did not have my ID.

We chatted while we waited. The men, both from Mexico, said they were roommates who split a nearby studio.

Suddenly, a man in a blue jacket briskly walking across the street tucked a tiny manila envelope under a blue minivan’s windshield wiper. Charlie crossed and grabbed it.

It’s here,” he said.

The two walked me to a set of secluded steps.

This is your resident card,” Charlie said. “Look at it.”

He slipped it into my open purse. It was an older version of the green card. A tiny hologram of my face was on the back.

He handed me the other cards. I palmed the money and shook his hand.

Listen, you have friends who need ID, you send them to me. You got my number,” he said.

NY Post Exclusive:

NY - Holy-War Over Sukkos At Trump Place Condos

A high-rise holy war has broken out at the Trump Place Condominiums, where one man’s straw Sukkot has left a concerned couple soaking wet and steaming mad.

Thomas Tagliani and Leslie Lucas say they’ve repeatedly complained about the Sukkot that Zev Geller, who lives two floors down, builds each year on his third-floor terrace.

The 20-foot-long religious structure is a fire hazard, and Geller allegedly regularly barbecues next to it, creating a dangerous “tinderbox condition,” according to the couple’s Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit.

Tagliani and Lucas are suing Geller, the condo owner and the condo board for $500,000. They want Geller booted from the building as well.

I’m Jewish. I built a Sukkot. I didn’t think much of it because it’s temporary,” Geller said. “I’m literally just a Jewish person living in New York City, but I guess my neighbor doesn’t like that.”

The case has nothing to do with religion, said lawyer William Perniciaro, who represents Tagliani and Lucas.

It’s about fire, period,” said Perniciaro.

Geller claims he researched the law and found that Sukkots don’t fall under the fire code.

I guess they take it personally that I’ve done anything on the terrace of my own apartment,” he said.

NY - Judge Rules In Favor Of Mets In Kosher Hot Dog Fight

Kosher Sports’ stand at Shea Stadium, Home of the NY Mets

Baseball season doesn't officially begin for another two months, but the Mets already batted one out of the park today.

The ball club's protracted fight with the vendor selling kosher hot dogs at Citi Field during Mets home games is finally coming to an end.

Today a federal judge ruled that the Mets have the right to restrict Kosher Sports Inc. from selling their wieners on the Jewish Sabbath, citing a contract between the two entities that does not explicitly guarantee weekend sales.

Two years ago, Kosher Sports -- headed by former Wall Street trader Jonathan Katz -- sued the Mets after claiming they were barred from selling hot dogs on Friday nights and Saturday, when attendance at ballgames tends to be higher.

The Mets argued that such sales violated the Jewish Sabbath, and internal ball-club e-mails cited concerns over a possible backlash from observant baseball fans.

At its core, the disagreement over baseball's omnipresent snack food became a real "federal case" - and could arguably rank among the most bitterly contested legal disputes over hot dogs in the history of American jurisprudence.

In a litany of court hearings over a two-year period, voices were raised, accusations of trickery were leveled, and tempers flared during discussions about the fine points of selling hot dogs at Major League baseball games.

At one point, the case even produced something of a "Weiner-gate" - when the Mets accused Kosher Sports of surreptitiously recording conversations between executives of stadium concessions giant Aramark -- and then employing a cover-up to hide the tapes from a federal judge.

Brooklyn federal Judge Jack Weinstein ruled today against Kosher Sports, throwing out its lawsuit against the Mets and holding that the hot dog vendor could be liable for damages because it stopped paying required annual fees to the ball-club.

The vendor - which sold its glatt-kosher dogs from pushcarts located on the stadium's lower levels - refused to make the payments because, they argued, the Mets never told them they couldn't sell wieners on the Sabbath until the 10-year contract was already signed.

In his four-page ruling, the judge held that the fine points of Kosher Sports' agreement to sell hot dogs actually were laid out in a contract with Aramark, which controls most concessionaires at Citi Field. Aramark was not a party to the lawsuit.

The hot dog vendor's contract directly with the Mets "does not" give Kosher Sports the right to sell its products at all events during the ten-year term of the agreement, the judge wrote.

Indeed, the hot dog vendor's contract with the Mets "principally cover advertising, not product vending issues," Weinstein wrote.

The judge directed a federal magistrate judge to hammer out the details of the legal dispute's resolution, and to decide how much Kosher Sports owes the Mets in damages - in addition to determining the future of the wiener vending contract.

Fourth NYPD suicide

Police haul the cop’s car off the Long Island Expressway last night. He was inside when he shot himself.

A cop killed himself yesterday on his way home after finishing his shift in Queens — becoming the fourth NYPD officer to die by his own hand in less than a month, sources told The Post.

Matthew Schindler, 39, a 14-year veteran and married father of three kids, pulled his car over at about 4:30 p.m. on the eastbound side of the Long Island Expressway near Exit 40 in Jericho and shot himself under the chin, the sources said.

Minutes earlier, Schindler, a highway-safety officer, texted his sergeant to tell him he would not be seeing him anymore.

He was one of the nicest people we ever met,” said a family friend, Ryan Proce, 38“He’s just an all-around great guy.”

Fellow cops were called back to the 115th Precinct station house in Jackson Heights last night and told the tragic news.

Flags at the building were lowered to half-staff.

“Oh, God, not another one,” said Bill Genet, head of a volunteer group that counsels troubled cops.

It was the fourth suicide to hit the NYPD in 2012 and the second in eight days.

On Super Bowl Sunday, Brian Saar, a 20-year veteran with twin 5-year-old daughters, shot himself at his Suffolk County home after arguing with his wife at a party, sources said.

On Jan. 19, Terrence Dean, 28, of the 111th Precinct in Queens, killed himself while on duty after getting a phone call from his fiancée, who told him she had called his precinct about his worsening depression.

Dean shot himself in the head with his service weapon while at the scene of a Queens car burglary in front of both his partner and the car’s owner.

On Jan. 15, rookie cop Patrick Werner, 23, shot himself in his parents’ home in suburban Yorktown Heights after getting into an car accident and fleeing.

Sources said he had been on his cell arguing with his girlfriend when he crashed.

Troubled cops can call the outside counseling group POPPA, Police Organization Providing Peer Assistance, headed by Genet.

Matthew Badger May Sue Michael Borcina Over Deadly Christmas Day Fire

Matthew and Madonna Badger embrace as the casket of one of their daughters arrives for the funeral services. Madonna is comforted by Michael Borcina, who survived the fire that killed her children and parents

This grieving dad is out for justice.

The Manhattan man whose three young daughters were killed in the horrific Christmas Day house fire in Connecticut has taken the first legal steps to sue over the deadly blaze, The Post has learned.

Matthew Badger filed papers in Stamford Probate Court recently, seeking to administer his daughters’ estates for a potential “wrongful-death claim.”

Badger’s lawyer Richard Emery yesterday was quick to say his client “has no intention of suing his ex-wife,” Madonna Badger — the Manhattan ad exec who, along with her boyfriend, survived the predawn fire that took the lives of her and Matthew’s daughters, Lily, 9, and 7-year-old twins Sarah and Grace.

Madonna’s parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, also perished.

But Emery leveled criticism at the boyfriend, Michael Borcina, who was the contractor leading renovations on Madonna Badger’s $1.7 million Stamford home, which had no working smoke detectors.

Borcina put still-smoldering ashes from the fireplace into an attached trash enclosure that officials say sparked the deadly inferno.

“That fact is that Borcina was the contractor on the job. He was aware of the dangers, or should have been aware of dangers, that a civilian would have been unaware of,” Emery told The Post, while emphasizing that no decision on whether to sue anyone has been made. “The fact that kids were living in this house was unbelievable . . . I don’t hold Madonna Badger responsible for that at all because I can’t imagine she would have understood the immediacy of the dangers.”

A Stamford police probe is ongoing into whether manslaughter or other charges should be lodged against Borcina and Madonna Badger, both of whom have been interviewed by cops.

After the fire, probers learned that the house had no certificate of occupancy, the smoke-detector system was not hooked up, and the last city inspection of the construction site was early last summer.

Emery was equally scathing in his criticism of the decision by the Stamford Buildings Department to have the still-smoldering house knocked down the day after the fire as a public-safety hazard.

He called the knock-down order “outrageous” and said “it raises all kinds of very serious suspicions that the house was destroyed . . . before anybody with expertise outside the city of Stamford was called in, [such as] insurance experts, State Police experts.”

Exactly one month after the fire, Matthew Badger filed legal papers asking the Stamford Probate Court to appoint him the administrator of his girls’ estates.

As their heirs and next of kin, both Matthew and Madonna Badger would be in line to inherit any proceeds.

Emery said that Matthew Badger is starting a foundation in his daughters’ memory that would fund school arts programs, adding that the proceeds of any wrongful-death suit might fund that foundation’s work.

Madonna Badger’s lawyer, Stan Twardy Jr., and Borcina’s attorney, Eugene Riccio, both said they hadn’t see the probate-court filing and had no comment.

Father of Stamford Fire Victims Eyes Possible Lawsuit: MyFoxNY.com

770 Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue $5 cut

A beggar asks for alms outside the Chabad Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Some are outraged the synagogue reportedly charges a $5 fee to beg inside, defying Jewish tradition

Beggars must pay seat license

It’s pay to pray at one Brooklyn synagogue.

Down-on-their luck panhandlers at the Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters in Crown Heights have to follow the 11th Commandment: Fork over $5 for the right to beg inside.

If you want to collect, you have to pay. If you don’t pay, you go on the street. It’s very simple,” said one outraged panhandler. “Poor people collecting money have to pay? It’s like extortion.

The beggars either position themselves by the stairwell, in the lobby, or inside the prayer area of the monolithic, four-story brick temple, which stands alongside the original Lubavitch synagogue.

All said they are unemployed, live nearby, and sometimes attend services at the bustling temple, where hundreds come to pray from morning until night every day.

They say their right to panhandle in the house of worship comes from a higher authority — Jewish law, which allows begging in synagogues and public events, including weddings, where food is set aside for beggars and uninvited guests.

But instead of a helping hand, Rabbi Avrohom Holtzberg, a synagogue administrator known as a gabbai, looks for a handout, the panhandlers said.

It’s like graft, payola,” charged a second beggar. “It’s embarrassing that you have to beg, and the fact they won’t help you is embarrassing — you’d think your rabbi would help you.”

“I can’t afford it — I only make about $40 a day,” the man added, saying he refuses to pay up, and instead stations himself outside the Eastern Parkway synagogue.

If they don’t comply inside, they’re shown the door and warned that if they don’t leave, the police will remove them, beggars said.

The policy has left the beggars with a sour taste in their mouths — and less cash in their frayed pockets.

They feel like we use this place a lot, so they want a percentage,” said Steven, a third beggar, who would only give his first name.

Synagogue administrators did not respond to a Post inquiry, but some congregants denied that such a policy exists.

It’s a lie from top to bottom!” said worshipper Mendel Drizin. “These rabbis are not poor people — they don’t need the $5 for people to beg inside.”

Beggars told the blog Failed Messiah that they were being slapped with a $5 fee because the congregation is “losing too much money” to the panhandlers. The policy has been in place for at least a year and a half, but only recently began to be enforced, beggars said.

There are some of these guys who are legitimate, but a lot of them are disrupting the congregants,” a worshipper who wished to remain anonymous told The Post. “These [beggars] stay here for 12 hours. They don’t want them there.”

NYC teacher is worth $10M, makes $100,000 a year, does nothing, & refuses to leave

Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire

Hell no, he won’t go.

In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire.

Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio hasn’t been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay.

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they can’t be fired, the DOE says.

“It’s an F-U,” a friend of Rosenfeld said of his refusal to quit.

“He’s happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system. This is a great show-up-but-don’t-do-anything job.”

Accused in 2001 of making lewd comments and ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens, Rosenfeld was slapped with a week off without pay after the DOE failed to produce enough witnesses at a hearing.

But instead of returning Rosenfeld to the classroom, the DOE kept him in one of its notorious “rubber rooms,” where teachers in misconduct cases sat idle or napped. As The Post reported, Rosenfeld kept busy managing his many investment properties and working on his law practice. He’s a licensed attorney and real-estate broker.

Since the DOE closed the teacher holding pens in June 2010, those facing disciplinary charges were scattered to offices and given tasks such as answering phones, filing and photocopying.

But Rosenfeld and six others whose cases have long been closed are “permanently reassigned.” Rosenfeld reports to the Division of School Facilities, which maintains DOE buildings, in a warehouse in Long Island City.

Asked what work he does, Rosenfeld laughingly told his friend, “Oh, I Xeroxed something the other day.”

Rosenfeld could have retired four years ago at 62, but his pension grows by $1,700 for each year he stays — even without teaching. If he quit today, his annual pension would total an estimated $85,400.

“Why not make it bigger?” the friend said.

Rosenfeld will also get paid for 100 unused sick days when he leaves.

New York has no mandatory retirement age for teachers.

That let rubber-room granddaddy Roland Pierre make a mockery of the system. He finally retired at age 76 last year — 14 years after he was yanked from PS 138 in Brooklyn and never taught again. Criminal charges in 1997 that he molested a sixth-grade girl were dropped. He got $97,101 a year.

“It’s a tremendous waste of money,” said Marcus Winters, a Manhattan Institute expert on teacher evaluation. “While we don’t want to remove people just because they’ve been accused, we also want the school system to cut ties with teachers it’s not going to put in the classroom.”

But Winters added, “If these people are actually dangerous, it’s better to waste the money than to put them back with kids.”

NY POST - A Jewish civil war

In Brooklyn, a Jewish woman sits in the back of the bus. The ultra-Orthodox have pushed for segregated transportation.

We need to confront the rise of ultra-Orthodox extremists in Israel and NYC or risk being hijacked by their agenda

In Israel, an 8-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl is spit on and called a whore as she walks to school because she is perceived to be dressed “immodestly” by her ultra-Orthodox neighbors.

A female soldier is harassed by an ultra-Orthodox man because she refuses to move to the back of a public bus.

A Jerusalem bookstore is repeatedly vandalized because its owner stocks books not approved by religious authorities.

A women’s clothing store is destroyed because it sells clothing that does not meet the most stringent modesty standards.

Thousands of protestors take to the streets — not in support of the victims of these crimes, but against the arrest of the ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, as they are known in Israel. And, even more disturbing, the protesters don concentration-camp garb and Nazi-era yellow stars emblazoned with the word “Jude,” and shout “Nazis!” at the police as they gather alongside banners with slogans comparing Israeli officials to those of the Third Reich and the Jerusalem chief of police to Hitler.

“What the [Israeli] government and the media is doing to us is like what the Nazis did,” one man tells a reporter.

In Israel, Orthodox voters — representing 10% of the total population — wield power disproportionate to their numbers. Early on in the state’s founding, this group represented a small minority of the population and were granted special privileges, like army deferments and subsidies, on the assumption that this remnant would ultimately assimilate into mainstream society.

But that didn’t happen and now, 60 years later, high haredi birth rates have turned this segment into a politically key demographic, able to make or break Israel’s coalition governments. This has in turn emboldened the haredim to push boundaries with little consequence, as taking them on can be politically costly for politicians — even when haredibehavior violates the law and infringes on the rights of others.

Israel now finds itself engaged in an ideological civil war. Is the secular state up to the task of reversing a dangerous trend that has been allowed to fester and grow for decades? At stake is the future of the country and whether it will maintain its status as a liberal democracy or, over time, be reduced to another Middle Eastern theocracy.

NOT JUST ISRAEL’S PROBLEM

Here in New York, there is also a thriving ultra, or strictly, Orthodox population. While, to be sure, the broader social context in which this group operates is quite different from that of their Israeli counterparts — the US is not a Jewish state, for one, and the ultra-Orthodox are a tiny minority of the overall US population — because they tend to vote in blocs, the strictly Orthodox wield considerable political clout in local and state affairs. And, as in Israel, there is evidence of growing extremism — and even violence — among some segments of this population here.

For example, in the upstate Hasidic village of New Square, where men and women are reminded by Yiddish signs to walk on opposite sides of the streets, last year a resident was set on fire (during an attempt to burn down his house) because he expressed dissent with the grand rabbi.

In Brooklyn, on public buses that run between the Hasidic neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Borough Park, women have been instructed to sit in the rear of the bus. And in Williamsburg, city workers have had to remove signs on public streets urging women to step aside when they see a man approaching. In Midwood, a wig shop was forced to close because the dean of a nearby yeshiva found the female mannequin heads in the store window too provocative.

As in Israel, perceived government intrusions into the strictly Orthodox way of life generate angry reactions, including accusations of anti-Semitism.

One prominent example of this occurred in 2005, when then-New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden attempted to warn the strictly Orthodox community of the dangers of a ritual practice known as metzizah b’peh, wherein the mohel, or ritual circumciser, “cleans” the infant’s wound by sucking the blood.

This practice had been demonstrated to have been responsible for a fatal herpes infection in one local child, and Frieden mistakenly believed that the community would want to know about the serious health risks of this practice.

Instead, rabbis perceived Frieden’s efforts as an attempt to encroach on religious freedom, and many whipped their followers into frenzy by convincing them that this was the opening salvo in a war that would inevitably end with a ban on circumcision.

In their sermons, rabbis compared Frieden and Mayor Bloomberg — both Jewish — to Nazis and the Russian czars.

Using less inflammatory language, a spokesman for the Agudath Israel of America, a strictly Orthodox lobbying organization led by a group of senior rabbis whose authority within these communities rivals that of the cardinals of the Vatican, insisted that this was a religious matter and that “the law allows for a certain degree of medical risk in order to accommodate religious practices.”

Ultimately, Frieden backed away from his initial intention to ban the practice and instead issued an open letter strongly advising against the ritual.

The state Health Department then issued virtually meaningless “guidelines” and the furor died down, with the practice ongoing to this day.

This was not the only example of the strictly Orthodox flexing their political muscle. In 2010, the Hasidic community in Williamsburg, in a blatant quid pro quo for votes, was able to get bike lanes removed from streets that run through its neighborhood. Their concerns included that the bikers posed a “safety and religious hazard” to the community as there were young female cyclists who “ride in shorts and skirts.

In July 2011, the head of the Boro Park Shomrim, a private community security patrol, told a reporter that his organization maintains a list of suspected child molesters that they do not report to the police because “the rabbis don’t let you. It’s not right.” Yet, despite this, the organization continues to receive public funds.

SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL

Perhaps one of the most egregious examples of how the Brooklyn strictly Orthodox community has been able to get away with behavior that is a threat to public safety, and at times criminal, is the special treatment that community has received by Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes with respect to child sexual abuse.

In March 2000, the Village Voice reported on Hynes’ prosecution of a prominent Brooklyn rabbi for witness tampering. The rabbi was accused of threatening a couple who had filed a complaint alleging that the woman’s father had committed rape and incest, telling them they would “end up in the cemetery” unless they dropped the charges. The Brooklyn Orthodox leadership called for Hynes’ removal and held mass rallies in a show of support of the rabbi.

This incident marked a turning point in Hynes’ prosecution of Orthodox criminals.

His “liaison to the Jewish community,” Henna White, cited Hynes’ record of “culturally sensitive” treatment of pedophiles, apparently signaling that, in return for political support, he would allow this community to deal with certain issues, such as child molestation, “in house.”

Hynes kept his word. Two months after a rabbi from the Bobov Hasidic sect in Brooklyn was arrested and charged with child sexual abuse, the DA dropped the charges and disbanded a grand jury hearing testimony on the case at the request of rabbis who informed him that a hastily called bet din (rabbinical tribunal) had found the alleged perpetrator innocent. One of the rabbis who served on the tribunal noted afterward: “We educated the DA on how to properly conduct a sex abuse trial.

In an October 2009 New York Times article, Rabbi David Zwiebel, executive vice president of Agudath Israel of America, was quoted as saying that “prosecutors should recognize ‘religious sensitivities’ by seeking alternatives to prison, to avoid depriving a family of its breadwinner” and warned that “The [Brooklyn] district attorney should be careful not to be seen as making a power grab from rabbinic authority.”

Agudath Israel reasserted its position at a Continuing Legal Education conference in May 2011, where an Agudath Israel spokesmen instructed lawyers and mental-health professionals that reports of child sexual abuse must first be made to rabbis. Only then, if the rabbis agree, should the police be notified.

In recent years, in large part due to blogs and grassroots activism, strictly Orthodox victims have begun speaking out. The Jewish Week investigated Hynes’ treatment of Orthodox abuse cases, calling him to account in a 2008 editorial titled “The Reluctant DA” for “a stance ranging from passive to weak willed.”

Recently, Hynes’ office seems to have been more aggressive, telling reporters he has arrested 85 Orthodox sex abusers since 2009. However, the fact that only 14 were sentenced to some jail time — and a shocking 24 have simply walked free, some, by the DAs own admission, because of intimidation — speaks to a serious problem, and one for which both the DA and the rabbinic leadership are at fault.

By instructing victims to obtain permission from rabbis before reporting these crimes to law enforcement, rabbinic leaders are in essence assigning themselves the role of law enforcement, obstructing justice and possibly even denying the civil rights of victims in the process. And because these rabbis have real power over the lives of community members, defying them is for most hardly a viable option. And yet Hynes remains bafflingly silent.

A DEMOGRAPHIC TIDAL WAVE

Woe unto anyone who dares criticize the rabbis. I did so and was accused in print of being an anti-Semite.

My accuser was Rabbi Avi Shafran, the director of public affairs of Agudath Israel of America and the editor-at-large of Ami Magazine, a publication geared towards strictly Orthodox Jews.

It was there that Shafran last month compared advocates for children, including me, to Nazi propagandists and blood libelers. The editorial was accompanied by a caricature, reminiscent of Der Stürmer, suggesting our opposition was equivalent to Nazi propaganda.

It would seem that here in the US, as in Israel, anyone exposing or addressing problems within the strictly Orthodox community can now expect to be labeled an anti-Semite.

And while there have been no mass protests by strictly Orthodox extremists in New York, their tactics here are no less insidious. Public statements in the media coupled with the sometimes irresponsible flexing of political muscle is, I believe, leading us along the well trodden path of the Israeli harediextremists.

The reality of Jewish demographics is no different here than in Israel — the ultra-Orthodox birth rate dwarfs that of the general Jewish community. Thus, there is a real likelihood that this “Taliban Judaism” — that has women and men walking on different sides of the street and rabbis defending life-threatening practices — will in time become the dominant form of Judaism in the US.

But this is an issue for the broader Jewish community. Silence is acquiescence. It is incumbent upon major Jewish organizations and moderate Jews — and that includes moderate Orthodox Jews — to step up and condemn the creeping extremism of the ultra-Orthodox community.

The fact that these communities have been able to extract all sorts of special treatment has implications for the larger society. If this group can get a health commissioner to back down, bike lanes removed, NYPD officials deferring to unsupervised security patrols and, most troubling of all, the DA to allow rabbis to handle sex-abuse cases — what might be next?

The Brooklyn DA, our state legislators and, to the extent applicable, the federal government have a duty to enforce and strengthen the laws protecting our children regardless of political considerations or misguided appeals to “cultural sensitivity.” Public safety, and the safety of all of our citizens, especially children, must trump politics.

And, when the strictly Orthodox rabbinic leadership’s conduct falls to levels so deplorable that they begin to tarnish the credibility and reputations of the communities they’re employed to serve, it becomes time to replace them.

And I don’t think it makes me an anti-Semite to say that I believe that time has come.

Ben Hirsch is a co-founder and president of Survivors for Justice (sfjny.org) an organization that advocates and educates on issues related to sexual abuse and child safety.

Orthodox cops: Shomrim funded by taxpayers

New York City should stop funding separate, private police forces for Jews

Earlier this month, a horrified New York City reeled under the news that 8-year-old Leiby Kletzky, a Hasidic boy in Brooklyn’s Borough Park, had been abducted on his way home from a nearby day camp and, the next evening, smothered to death and dismembered by his captor, who was also an Orthodox Jew.

The public got a second shock when it learned that Leiby’s disappearance was only belatedly reported to the police, and that a privately run, Orthodox Jewish “patrol” called Shomrim reportedly had video evidence that went unused during the crucial hours before the murder, while untrained Jewish laymen tried to handle the investigation themselves.

And now comes what ought to be shock No. 3: Jewish vigilante groups like Shomrim, unskilled and ill-equipped for police work, and all too often driven by religious proscriptions to keep their community’s crimes out of the public eye, are being paid to interfere with the authorities by New York City taxpayers — through the generous offices of some City Council members.

The council’s just-finalized budget for 2012 includes more than $130,000 in “member item” donations to private Orthodox Jewish pseudo-police — gifts of taxpayer money that were personally authorized by Democratic Brooklyn City Councilmen Lewis Fidler, David Greenfield, Brad Lander and Stephen Levin. Remember that these Jewish patrols operate only in a few Brooklyn neighborhoods and answer to the needs of only one religious community.

Why, then, are city legislators doling out increasingly scarce public funds to help Jewish gendarmes compete with the NYPD?

I am an Orthodox Jew; I am also a lawyer with an extensive record of advocacy for victims of child abuse. And I have a message for politicians who curry favor with Jewish voting blocs by helping to fund their private patrols: Don’t do it.

It’s bad government, and bad law enforcement practice, to share taxpayer money with religion-based groups whose contribution to police work is doubtful at best and whose priorities may well conflict with the law.

Not so long ago, a warning against government funding for vigilantes would have been needless. When Curtis Sliwa founded the Guardian Angels in 1979, New York City officials, including then-Mayor Ed Koch, didn’t want them in New York City at all; those young idealists would have been laughed all the way across the Hudson if they’d had the temerity to ask City Council for handouts.

Does anyone truly believe that Orthodox Jewish vigilantes like the Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol, the Williamsburg Safety Patrol and the Shmira Civilian Volunteer Patrol of Borough Park — all of them on the take for budget dollars in 2012 — do the city a better service?

One of the publicly stated purposes of the Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol is to deal with “bias crimes.” That’s doubtless a worthy goal, but one hardly expects a patrol run exclusively by a single religious group to be expert in enforcing anti-discrimination laws.

To put it another way: If the Nation of Islam were to set up a private force of Muslims, ostensibly to scour Harlem for “bias crimes,” would City Council members be heaping public money into its coffers?

Orthodox Jewish-run law enforcement is not only an inevitably one-sided affair; there’s considerable evidence that its role can be harmful even to members of its own community. Traditional rabbinic authority — which dominates Orthodox decision-making — remains skeptical of reporting crimes allegedly committed by Jews to the police, even when (as in Leiby Kletzky’s case) the victims are also Jews.

Consider the “Kol Tzedek” program announced, with much fanfare, by Brooklyn prosecutors in April 2009 in conjunction with the Orthodox bulwark Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services agency. According to District Attorney Charles Hynes, the initiative was “aimed at helping sex-crime victims in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish communities report abuse . . . to secular authorities.”

But when Ohel announced the same program in its own promotional newsletter, it carefully excised from the DA’s press release every reference to police, prosecutors or the reporting of crimes — a move that was especially disturbing from an agency dogged for years by allegations of shirking its own obligation to report suspected child abuse.

For its insult to the DA and his stated law enforcement policy, Ohel was rewarded with $900,000 in federal “earmarks” for fiscal year 2010, approved by then-Congressman Anthony Weiner.

Ohel’s oil-and-water attitude toward secular law enforcement is no fluke; at the very moment volunteers were frantically combing Brooklyn for the missing Leiby Kletzky, Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, one of America’s most influential Orthodox authorities, emphasized at a conference that child sexual abuse allegedly committed by a Jew must be reported first to a rabbi, who then decides whether police should be contacted.

Rabbi Kamenetsky’s word is law to most of the Brooklyn Orthodox Jews who run patrols like Shomrim. Yet, in many cases, following his directives on child abuse would violate New York’s mandatory reporting statute.

Moreover, if Orthodox patrol members use a threat of force to discourage a Jewish victim from going to the police, based on a similar understanding of rabbinic law, they are violating federal civil rights statutes.

There’s already more than enough evidence that current Orthodox practice is unacceptable under applicable legal standards. New York police have criticized Shomrim groups for failing to notify them of some of the calls their operators receive; in fact, it has been widely reported that the Jewish patrols regularly withhold information on suspected child molesters if they are Jewish.

Death threats, signed by dozens of rabbis, appeared some years ago in a Yiddish Brooklyn newspaper against anyone who “informs” on a fellow Jew to secular authorities. And although an amateur detective from the Bobov Hasidic sect is now being touted as the Sherlock Holmes who ultimately led police to Leiby Kletzky’s killer, leading members of that same community participated in a systematic cover-up of a serious case of alleged child abuse in 2000, involving not only efforts to silence the alleged victim and his family, but even direct lobbying of the District Attorney’s Office, which dropped all charges after a group of rabbis pressured prosecutors with highly questionable “evidence.” (Co-writer Amy Neustein and I documented this in detail in a recent book.)

Despite all this, taxpayer-funded largesse to Jewish patrols is becoming a New York City tradition. In 2009, the Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol got itself a lavishly outfitted $250,000 “mobile security command center” with “hefty grants from the City Council and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz,” according to founder Chaim Deutsch. The 22-foot-long vehicle is equipped with a conference room, computers, a fax machine, a color copier and a flat-panel television screen.

Do you like the idea that New York City residents, Jewish and non-Jewish, paid a quarter of a million dollars to give those resources to an organization whose members may have to ask a rabbi before telling police about a possible crime?

I am sure the great majority of people who serve in Orthodox patrols are honest and dedicated folks who do their best to ensure the safety of their communities. But government handouts for groups like Shomrim is one tradition New York would be much better off without.

Michael Lesher is a writer and lawyer, and a contributor to “Tempest in the Temple: Jewish Communities & Child Sex Scandals,” edited by Amy Neustein (Brandeis University Press).

'Hung up' FDNY muzzles 'birthday rabbi'

Rabbi Mayer Birnhack














He made too many house calls.

A rabbi and EMS chaplain who routinely phoned medics to wish them happy birthday was disciplined by the FDNY for accessing unauthorized personnel data.

Rabbi Mayer Birnhack, aka the "birthday rabbi," was suspended without pay for 15 days after ignoring orders from brass to stop looking at confidential employee files.

Birnhack got the mazel-toss in April after defying repeated instructions not to peek at birth dates, hire dates, retirement dates and other info that he culled so he could make his cheery congratulations calls.

The FDNY has gotten numerous complaints over the years from EMS members who don't appreciate Birnhack's intrusions into their personal lives.

"Nice guy, good intentions . . . but I'm a little uncomfortable with how much personal info he has access to . . . always seems to know more about where your career is in EMS than some of your supervisors," one EMT wrote on an online forum.

But hundreds of others were outraged to learn the FDNY had muzzled the mensch. A Facebook page created last week in his defense got more than 700 members in a matter of days.

"I recall the rabbi calling," one FDNY medic posted. "I thought it was an accident because I am Catholic. He introduced himself and went on to wish me a happy birthday . . . I asked a co-worker about him and everyone proceeded to say that Rabbi Birnhack was one of the few people on the job who actually cared."

Another EMT wrote: "My birthday is in a few weeks. I eagerly anticipate his annual call and kind voice. I know he has my number."

A phone-call campaign to FDNY headquarters and an online petition were also launched.

"Please just let the rabbi go back to doing what he has done so well for so many years," pleaded one EMT.

Birnhack refused to comment when reached at his Gravesend, Brooklyn, home.

The 45-year-old Orthodox rabbi has worked for EMS since 1988, when the Health and Hospitals Corp. ran the city's medical service.

Shortly after EMS merged with the FDNY in 1996, the EMT-trained rabbi was assigned to the counseling unit. He makes $50,433 annually as an EMS chaplain.

In a 2002 article published in a Jewish newspaper, Birnhack claimed a top chief told him he was "too Jewish," and complained that he wasn't allowed to officiate at agency events.

The rabbi declined to officially file a complaint, however, and his claims were never substantiated. The FDNY denied the allegations.

The 1-grand rabbi - Shul offers $1,000 for stolen dollar bill

It's such a blessed buck, it's actually worth $1,000 -- and it may be floating somewhere in a Florida waterway.

The Chabad House-Lubavitch of Palm Beach is offering a $1,000 reward -- no questions asked -- for the safe return of the $1 bill that was stolen Tuesday night during a burglary at the synagogue.

The thief, caught on surveillance camera, stole a special donation box at the Chabad center that included the bill, considered sacred because it was blessed by the movement's late grand rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

During the late 1980s, Schneerson was known for handing out dollar bills to thousands of visitors who'd line up for hours on Sundays outside his Crown Heights, Brooklyn, headquarters to greet him.

Before heading to Florida in 1987 to open the center, Rabbi Shlomo Ezagui said he received one of the coveted bills from Schneerson with instructions that it be taped inside a charity box and displayed at the center. The bill has written on it blessings Schneerson gave during the meeting, which Ezagui wrote down.

Ezagui said the bill, which has remained in the box ever since, is "priceless" to the center.

"It represented the soul and great energy of the rebbe," he said. "Everything else can be replaced."

A surveillance camera showed an intruder breaking through a window and stealing charity boxes and a cash register with hundreds of dollars.

Local police investigating the incident didn't return messages yesterday, but Ezagui said cops told him the thief was caught and confessed to stealing the money to pay off a drug dealer.

The wooden box with the taped $1 bill was then tossed by the dealer into the Intracoastal Waterway, Ezagui said he learned from cops.

The rabbi said he's hoping the box will eventually be recovered with the blessed bill intact.

Sick cell call is strongest clue in search for Long Island serial killer

Shannan Gilbert & Police use cadaver dogs to search the thick brush on the side of the road near Oak Beach















When a call came in from her sibling's cellphone days after she went missing, Amanda Barthelemy didn't know what to think.

"Is this Melissa's little sister?" a man asked.

"Yes," replied the 16-year-old girl.

"Do you know what your sister is doing?" he said. "She's a whore."

The call, police believe, was made by a sadistic serial killer who abducted and strangled Melissa Barthelemy, an aspiring hair stylist, sometime after she left her Bronx apartment on July 10, 2009.

But not before extracting a secret from the 24-year-old victim, who moved to New York from Buffalo in 2007.

Melissa had not told her mother she was turning tricks to pay her bills, though she'd been booking clients on Craigslist and meeting johns for sex for more than a year.

She lied and said she was an exotic dancer. Only Amanda got the truth.

"No one else knew," said their mom, Lynn Barthelemy.

It was the first real clue about the twisted psyche of a predator who stalked and choked to death at least eight prostitutes in the last five years, and possibly murdered four others.

That's the body count after cops this week linked the murder of Melissa Barthelemy and three other prostitutes found near Gilgo Beach in Suffolk County in December to four dead sex workers left in a ditch near Atlantic City in 2006, sources told The Post. All died from strangulation, their corpses stashed before being dumped.

"It's the same guy," said one law-enforcement source.

A third cluster of four bodies discovered a few miles from Gilgo Beach last week has fueled speculation that a Long Island serial killer used the sandy south shore as his burial ground.

There are conflicting reports about a possible suspect. Suffolk officials said they don't have one, but a police source familiar with the investigation said cops are focusing on a man who lives in the county. They've been watching him for days, the source said.

And they're re-examining every bit of evidence in the cases, including that first call to Amanda, which was followed by a half-dozen more during the next six weeks.

The killer always phoned in the evenings, spoke briefly and in a low voice -- and only to Amanda. He calmly spewed taunts and allegations. He sent text messages.

"He wouldn't talk to anybody but her," said Lynn Barthelemy, who documented the barrage in a journal she gave police. "One time I answered, and he hung up as soon as he heard my voice."

Cops began to triangulate the phone, pinpointing the caller's location to Times Square, Madison Square Garden and Massapequa, a short drive from Gilgo Beach. They showed Melissa's picture around at strip clubs. Did her murderer work in Midtown and commute from Long Island?

The girls were close, and their family wondered: Had the killer gotten a glimpse of Amanda, who twice came to stay with Melissa?

"When Amanda went down there, the first thing they did was to get a manicure and pedicure," said their mom. "They went to the zoo and the Statue of Liberty."

But the sister did not recall anyone who might have been a suspect.

The calls abruptly stopped in August 2009 after a Buffalo TV station revealed their existence.

But by then, police believe, Melissa was already dead. The stories of others would soon emerge.

When Megan Water man went on the road to meet her clients, she'd drop off her 4-year-old daughter, Lily, with her grandparents, borrow a friend's Ford Explorer or catch the bus from Scarborough, Maine, to Long Island.

She would go at the request of her boyfriend, Akeem Cruz, who called himself "Vibe" and doubled as her pimp. He used a laptop to place ads for her services and accompanied her to the Holiday Inn Express in Hauppauge. While Waterman, 22, met johns, Cruz visited his family nearby.

"I told her I thought it was so crazy and dangerous," said her friend Nicole "Nicci" Haycock, who dates Waterman's brother Greg. "But Megan was very free."

The couple took a bus to Long Island last spring and checked in at the hotel on June 5. That night, they left together at 8 p.m., and she returned 30 minutes later by herself. At 1:30 a.m., she got a call on her cell from Cruz's cell, then left her room alone.

A witness last spotted Waterman outside, walking toward a convenience store, Haycock said. It was the last time Waterman was seen alive.

Waterman's body was the first to be identified from among the four remains found near Gilgo Beach. Cops grilled Cruz. About three weeks ago, they seized his laptop.

"He's not considered a suspect, but he hasn't cooperated," said Haycock.

Maureen Brainard-Barnes, the earliest Long Island victim, was an energetic single mom of two young daughters who wrote poetry and liked the books of Shel Silverstein.

The 25-year-old brunette came into the city by train with two acquaintances, Brett and Sarah, from Norwich, Conn., on the morning of July 9, 2007, to meet clients, a friend said.

Brainard-Barnes called her friend in distress that night from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, saying she had been robbed of the money she earned that day.

"She just wanted to come home," said the friend. "She said she was coming that night and would check in."

Brett and Sarah returned without Maureen, who had gone off by herself.

"They said they didn't know what happened to her," the friend said.

Amber Lynn Costello, 27, who vanished from Long Island on Sept. 2, was the killer's most recent victim.

A petite woman who stood under 5 feet and weighed only 100 pounds, Costello grew up in Wilmington, NC, where she was physically abused as a youth, according to a friend who asked not to be identified.

The abuse led to drug addiction, which she supported by working for Private Playmates escort service.

After getting divorced, she moved to North Babylon last year and continued her spiral of drugs and prostitution.

The victims might never have been dis- covered had it not been for the disappearance of Shannan Gilbert, a 24-year-old aspiring singer from Jersey City who, like the others, booked johns through Craigslist.

At 2 a.m. on May 1, Gilbert's driver took her to the home of customer Joe Brewer in the gated, millionaires' community of Oak Beach, a few miles east of Gilgo Beach, and waited outside. At 5 a.m., Brewer called him and complained that Gilbert would not leave.

The driver went in and found Gilbert dressed, "delirious" and on the phone with 911. She said to him, "You guys are trying to kill me" and she ran from the house, the driver said. He followed.

She pounded on the door of neighbor Gus Coletti, saying, "Help me. Help me." Coletti thought she was high but unhurt. She ran off.

The driver returned the next day with Gilbert's boyfriend to continue their search.

Police combed Brewer's house soon after Gilbert disappeared, and their search for her led them to the first cluster of four bodies near Gilgo Beach.

They again searched Brewer's home following last week's discovery of four more bodies. But they found nothing to tie him to the murders.

Police sources would not say what led authorities to link the New Jersey murder victims -- Kim Raffo, Molly Jean Dilts, Barbara Breidor and Tracy Ann Roberts -- to the first four in Long Island. But there were several common elements.

In each case, the killer dumped four prostitutes near water and in close proximity, tossing their remains off remote, desolate sections of highway. The bodies were in various stages of decomposition, suggesting he kept some for a period of time after they died.

All eight were low-level sex workers, and the four in New York used Craigslist. Each had been strangled.

He had removed the shoes from both sets of bodies, though the women in New Jersey were clothed. Those in Long Island had been stripped naked and were found without jewelry or belongings, each wrapped in burlap.

New York, NY - Police Radios Don't Work Inside New $743M JetBlue Terminal

The new $743 million JetBlue terminal at JFK Airport is a police radio "dead zone" that puts Port Authority cops in a Ground Zero-like communications blackout that has already led to a slew of police injuries, The Post has learned.

The embarrassing gaffe was discovered by PA honchos some six months before the cavernous, 26-gate terminal opened to the public in October 2008, when officials ran down a checklist of safety issues, an agency insider said.

"There was a moment of, 'Oops! The police radios aren't going to work,' " the source said.

One angry PAPD supervisor characterized the agency's blunder as an indefensible, especially since it set aside a whopping $663 million to pay for the terminal's construction, with JetBlue picking up the rest of the tab.


"It is absolutely mind-boggling that a terminal built after 9/11 would have a flaw like this that would prevent communication between police officers," he said.

Thirty-seven PAPD cops died on 9/11, along with 343 FDNY members and 23 NYPD cops, many because they did not hear critical radio communications that had ordered them to evacuate.

Since the JetBlue terminal opened, at least six cops have been injured when police reinforcements were late in arriving to help them in separate incidents, multiple sources insist.

Most of the injured cops were hurt battling with drunk or disorderly travelers in the terminal, which services some 15 million people annually, the source added.

To deal with the snafu, PAPD cops assigned to the terminal are given preprogrammed cellphones at the start of their shifts to call the JFK police command if an emergency crops up.

PA spokesman John Kelly acknowledged cops assigned there were now using "backup [telephone] communication," but maintained that an "interim system implemented in April 2010 provides partial coverage" for cops using their police radios -- a claim several police officials sharply disputed.

A permanent fix will cost an estimated $3 million and is many months away from completion, a source said, adding:

"There's no cheap fix or quick fix for this."

'Hit man for hire' double-crosses NJ wacko

It must have been the first "hit" on her Google search.

Federal authorites say a jealous Jersey City woman turned to a Web site called Hitmanforhire.com to arrange the rubout of a romantic rival, not realizing the hired gun was a down-on-his-luck Las Vegas card dealer masquerading as a Mafioso.

Marissa Mark, 28, used three stolen credit cards and a PayPal account to give "Tony Luciano" a $17,000 deposit for the murder, according to a federal complaint.

In reality, "Luciano" was Essam Ahmed Eid, an Egyptian national living in Sin City and working at the Bellagio, the feds say.

Mark -- who was arrested Tuesday for the 2006 murder plot -- agreed to pay Eid another $20,000 to whack her ex-boyfriend's new gal pal, the feds allege.

Eid showed up at the office of the intended target, Anne Royston, a Los Angeles-area mortgage broker, and confessed that he'd been hired to kill her, authorities said.

Eid then offered to kill Mark if Royston paid the remaining $20,000 on the contract for her life. Royston alerted police and Eid has been charged in California with conspiracy and extortion, according to court documents.

He was convicted of a similar plot in Ireland.

Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein: I'm a sex offender, not a predator

Billionaire pervert Jeffrey Epstein is back in New York City -- and making wisecracks about his just-ended jail stint for having sex with an underage girl.

"I'm not a sexual predator, I'm an 'offender,' " the financier told The Post yesterday.

"It's the difference between a murderer and a person who steals a bagel," said Epstein.

Epstein's flippant reasoning aside, a New York judge ruled at a hearing last month that the moneyman is the most dangerous kind of sex offender: a Level 3.

That means, according to the state, Epstein is at "high risk" to repeat his offense and poses "a threat to public safety."

But Epstein doesn't seem bothered by the designation.

"The crime that was supposedly committed in Florida is not a crime in New York," he said.

Epstein recently returned to his $50 million East 71st Street mansion and celebrated his release from a Florida jail with his close pal, Britain's Prince Andrew.

Epstein served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for soliciting a minor for prostitution.

In court papers, the victim was identified as a 14-year-old girl.

At one point, Epstein was facing 10 years to life on multiple counts of statutory rape, according to investigators. Court documents in that case claimed he routinely sought out girls as young as 14 and paid them $200 to $1,000 for sexual massages in his homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and Manhattan.

He also molested girls he had brought in from South America and Europe and once was given three 12-year-old girls from France as a "birthday gift," the documents alleged.

Epstein struck a secret nonprosecution deal with the feds. The government agreed to drop its probe of various sex-crime allegations if Epstein copped to prostitution felonies in Florida state court.

But in New York's sex-offender database, Epstein doesn't come up in a ZIP code search. He shows up only via the "name search" option, and no New York address is listed.

That's because Epstein's Upper East Side home is considered "temporary." By state law, he is required to provide only his permanent address to the database, and Epstein listed his Florida home.

Disgraced EMT accused of ignoring dying pregnant woman charged with shoplifting

Melisa Jackson




















A disgraced FDNY EMT, facing criminal charges after allegedly ignoring a pregnant woman while she was having a fatal asthma attack in a Brooklyn cafe, is in hot water again.

Melisa Jackson, 25, was arrested on Monday on shoplifting charges after she allegedly swiped $49 worth of cosmetics off the shelf of a Walmart store in Westbury, in Nassau County, police said. Jackson was charged with petit larceny and released, said police officials. She is due back in court in March 1.

Jackson, who lives in Queens, was off-duty at the time. She was suspended for 30 days without pay immediately following her arrest, said a FDNY spokesman.

Jackson still faces criminal charges of official misconduct in Brooklyn Criminal Court stemming from an incident in December, 2009 when she and boyfriend, fellow EMT Jason Green allegedly ignored Eutisha Rennix, 25, a worker at an Au Bon Pan cafe, while she was having a fatal asthma attack.

The pair, who were on a break, called a fire dispatcher for an ambulance but provided no assistance and left before help arrived, prosecutors allege

Rennix later died along with her premature baby.

Green, 32 was shot dead in July after an argument over a parking spot near a lower Manhattan nightclub