SHEEPSHEAD BAY'S ONLY INDEPENDENT NEWS BLOG

Photo By Erica Sherman

Brighton Beach was hit as hard as any other coastal community ravaged by Superstorm Sandy and local residents are still feeling the effects of its destruction in the form of expensive electric bills, according to a report by CBS NY.

Since Sandy came ashore late last October, amazingly, many residents of Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay and elsewhere are still without heat. To stay warm in these harsh winter months, people have substituted working heat with electric space heaters, many of which were given out by Red Cross, FEMA and other disaster support groups.

As a consequence, their electric bills have skyrocketed, punishing the pocket books of people just trying to stay warm.

CBS NY tracked the plight of the residents of 601 Brightwater Court. After Sandy, the heat was knocked out of the building and the city distributed electric space heaters to keep elderly couples like Pavel Gertsman and his wife warm.

While the heaters were welcome, the increased electric bills topping out at an extra $150 a month, were not. Their plight was relayed through Brighton Beach Business Improvement District Executive Director Yelena Makhnin:

“They’re on a fixed income with $1,100 family, and the difference in $150, it makes those people choose between food and Con Edison bills,” Makhnin said.

She said the Gertsmans have health problems and cannot afford the huge bill.

Con Ed spokesman Bob McGee said the utility is forbidden by law from reducing the Gertsman’s bill.

For his part, McGee suggested that people unable to pay their bills as a result of Sandy could try reaching out to non-profit organizations like the Red Cross.

Other options include contacting the city’s Human Resources Administration, which has federally funded home energy assistance programs. You can visit their website by clicking the link above or call them at (800) 692-0557.

Source: foodbanknyc.org

City Councilman Lew Fidler, Assemblyman Alan Maisel and three other pols from around Brooklyn filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the city’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) and its commissioner Robert Doar, claiming that the city’s decision to limit emergency distribution of food assistance was “arbitrary and capricious,” and violated law.

The suit argues that HRA’s decision to limit Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (DSNAP) to 10 zip codes and two partial zip codes had no rationale, and caused additional suffering for Sandy victims in Canarsie and elsewhere. The federal government identified 82 zip codes hit by the storm, and the city should have opened the program to anyone in those zip codes, they argue.

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Janna Doheny, after surrendering to authorities. (Source: Brooklyn DA)

Janna Doheny, the owner of multiple units inside Brighton Beach’s posh Oceana condominium development, is charged with bilking more than $29,000 from Medicaid over the course of eight years, according to a new indictment revealed by the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.

Doheny, 43, filed falsified documents for Medicaid, claiming her only source of income for her and her daughter was just $1,550 a month from her job at an adult entertainment establishment in Queens, and that her savings and investments totaled less than $5,000.

But investigators claim that Doheny wasn’t as cash strapped as her Medicaid application stated. They say Doheny lived the high life, making pricey purchases at Saks Fifth Avenue, Victoria’s Secret and Amazon, as well as getting professional glamour shots in skimpy swimwear while vacationing at a luxury resort in Arizona – a discovery they found by perusing her profile on a Russian-language social networking site.

“Lying to the system to receive Medicaid is a theft of taxpayer dollars and will not be tolerated,” said Human Resources Administration Commissioner Robert Doar, whose agency assisted in the investigation. “At HRA, we maintain the integrity of public assistance programs by providing benefits to those who are eligible and investigating those who ignore the rules.”

Investigators also found that Doheny not only purchased several condo units at Oceana between 2002 and 2010 – where price tags range from $500,000 to $2 million – but that she also owned property in Bay Ridge, Long Beach and South Florida.

The complaint goes on to state that Doheny deposited more than $100,000 annually into several bank accounts in her own name and the name of her business, Oceana Ventures, as well as a pile of cash totaling $170,000 in a safe deposit box on Long Island.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, along with the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General and the Human Resources Administration, started to take a closer look at Doheny’s holdings after being tipped off to the Oceana purchases.

Source: Offices of Charles Hynes

For more than six years, Rivka Baror, 51, and her husband Avraham Baror, 64, fraudulently collected $108,715.57 in Medicaid and food-stamp benefits while using phony names to hide assets, including a home and several luxury automobiles, prosecutors allege.

Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes and Human Resources Administration Commissioner Robert Doar announced the indictment of the husband and wife team for their participation in the crimes, which spanned from January 1, 2006, through June 30, 2012.

According to the defendants’ welfare application forms filed under the names Avraham Baror and Rivka Baror, the couple claimed to have minimal income and no assets, which enables them to receive food-stamp and Medicaid benefits.

However, investigators from HRA and the District Attorney’s office uncovered documents showing the defendants used aliases to maintain bank accounts and purchase property, cars and vacations.

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Source: I Nancy via Flickr

Eleven people have been arrested in an alleged fraud ring in which 38 day care centers collected $18 million in public funds since 2007, with several of the day cares located in Sheepshead Bay.

In all, four day care operators and seven city workers were charged with conspiring to pay or receive bribes; all but one were charged with conspiracy to commit fraud. Each of the defendants faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the mail fraud conspiracy charge, and a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison on the bribery conspiracy charge, as well as fines of up to $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense.

The complaint charges that a ring of 38 day care operators known as “The Congregation” paid bribes to city workers from three city agencies: the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Human Resources Administration and the Administration for Children’s Services.

The Congregation, allegedly controlled by Sheepshead Bay resident Liudmila Umarov, was exploiting the city’s Day Care Subsidy Program, which covers the costs of care for children from low-income families so that parents can obtain jobs. Umarov and her associates – Lyudmila Grushko, Yana Krugly and Rimma Volovnick – paid city workers for names and social security numbers of children who qualified for the program, and began billing the city for care they were not providing. Bribes were also paid to inspectors to overlook infractions, which included unqualified staff, lack of background checks, and not enough space per child. In at least one instance, hard alcohol was found in the refrigerator next to student lunches.

Among the Sheepshead Bay area day cares named in the complaint are: Paragon II Day Care, Inc., Learning Center Paragon, Amazing World Day Care Center, Banner Learning Center, Inc., and Sesame Street LMN Day Care. All of these centers are on Banner Avenue, just off Coney Island Avenue, though the full reach of the ring went as far as Staten Island.

Investigators hinted that more day care centers may be involved, and that the investigation will burrow further into this “massive fraud and bribery scheme.”

“We were concerned about the potential safety risk associated with letting this type of fraud go on,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement yesterday. “It is fair to say that today’s events mark the end of just the first chapter in a very active and ongoing investigation.”

View the Justice Department’s criminal complaint.
[via The New York Times]