GLNews New York

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Man claims he was fired for turning down female coworkers

An ex-employee at a Manhattan public relations firm says he was canned after rejecting a barrage of come-ons by female coworkers, and now he’s suing.

Joseph Earl Jackson says he “endured” seven months of female admirers hugging him, kissing him and telling him “you are so handsome” at the offices of at Open Communications Omnimedia on W. 30th St.

The $ 35,000-a-year account coordinator claims the company’s chief strategist, Sally O’Dowd, told him “how she loved young black and Hispanic men” and “that she loved how sexy his chest and deltoids were in his white button down shirt,” according to the Manhattan sexual harassment suit.

O’Dowd even commented on her underling’s penis size after a client pitched a new product—a case with a condom inside.

The randy boss said the condom “probably wouldn’t fit Joseph.”

Jackson, who was hired in July 2013, claims O’Dowd also “without warning hugged him three times,” “sexually whispered in to his ear, ‘You are so handsome,” and kissed him on the back of the neck.

The incident left him “distraught,” he gripes in court papers.

But the alleged harassment did not stop with O’Dowd, another supervisor named Kathryn Campisano allegedly pursued Jackson on the sly, texting him last November, “When are we going to have our bang sesh?”

She followed up the query a month letter with a message that read, “I’m going to need you to be my next boyfriend Joseph,” the suit says.

But Jackson remained a loyal employee despite the distractions, he claims in court papers.

“Jackson endure, he continued to perform as a stellar employee,” and was even given more responsibility in mid-February.

When Jackson complained to Open Communications CEO John Andrew Morris, allegedly ridiculed him in front of his colleagues.

The PR honcho called Jackson “a hater that needed to be removed,” the suit says. He was canned on Feb. 21.

The harassment has left him feeling “extremely humiliated, degraded, victimized, embarrassed, and emotionally distressed.” Jackson is seeking unspecified damages.

Open Communication’s attorney Peter Gallagher said, “The court process is great because the scrutiny it entails allows the truth to come out and we think that when the court process is through the truth is going to show that these are all baseless allegations.”

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Cross-dresser steals iPhone from Bronx wig store

Surveillance footage released Wednesday shows the cross-dressing thief grab an employee’s iPhone 5S from a display counter at Wakefield’s Mo Tress Wig and Hair Store, located at 4200 White Plains Road.

DCPI

Surveillance footage released Wednesday shows the cross-dressing thief grab an employee’s iPhone 5S from a display counter at Wakefield’s Mo Tress Wig and Hair Store, located at 4200 White Plains Road.

Police are looking for a man wearing a colorful dress who swiped a phone from a Bronx wig store employee while the woman was fitting a customer with a new hairpiece.

Nickalee Williams, 29, said she turned around momentarily to show a customer a wig at Mo Tress Wig and Hair Store when the cross-dressing suspect grabbed her iPhone 5S

“I am hoping he actually pays for the phone,” said Williams on Wednesday from the Wakefield store. “I had to pay $ 175 to get a new phone and I’m still paying for the contract.”

Williams said the suspect chatted her and another co-worker up before the theft, mentioning that he was in the midst of sex reassignment surgery and then flashed one of the women.

“He said Medicaid paid for his b—s to be cut off,” said Williams, who added, “I knew he was a man.”

The suspect stands 5-feet-8 with a stocky build, cops said. He was last seen wearing a pink hooded coat over a black hooded sweatshirt and a multicolored dress.

Police are asking anyone with information about the incident to call Crime stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).

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Mayor to Reverse Bloomberg Approved Charter School Proposals

The de Blasio administration announced it will reverse some school co-location decisions made at the end of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s term.

Some of those involved plans to locate charter schools in traditional school buildings.

The Department of Education says it reviewed 45 proposals that Bloomberg approved for the 2014 school year.

It will reverse the decision on 9 of those proposals.

The DOE says it considered resources, construction and the mixing of elementary and high schools.

The mayor says Bloomberg rushed to approve co-locations that were not in the best interest of students.

“I’m not gonna mince words about what I feel about how the Bloomberg administration made decisions on co-locations. I think it was abhorrent. I think it was done without real consultation with parents, real consultation with the schools that were gonna be affected, the receiving schools. And I think a lot of those co-locations proved to be very problematic in practice,” said de Blasio.

Three of the schools which won’t be allowed to open as co-locations are part of the Success Academy, charter schools founded by former Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz.

She says she plans to cancel classes for a day next week so her students can attend a rally in Albany trying to gain support for charter schools.

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Madoff aide ‘never heard of a Ponzi scheme’ until boss’ bust

Bernie Madoff sure liked ‘em clueless.

The notorious fraudster’s longtime secretary claimed ignorance on the witness stand Thursday, saying she “never heard of a Ponzi scheme” until it was described to her by a co-worker hours after Madoff was busted by the feds in December 2008.

Annette Bongiorno also told a Manhattan federal jury that her biggest worry was she’d be hit with a huge income tax bill when she was ordered — a day before Madoff’s Dec. 11, 2008 arrest — to close out all of the company staffer and family members’ investment-advisory accounts with the firm.

“My first thought was, ‘What, am I going to have to pay all the taxes on it in one year?’ ” said Bongiorno, who then had $ 50 million in the account and is one of the five ex-staffers on trial for fraud.

“I didn’t know Madoff Securities was about to collapse. I had no clue,” she added when asked whether the odd request by Madoff and his CFO-turned-government informant Frank DiPascali raised any red flags.

DiPascali, who copped a plea to fraud charges and testified against Bongiorno and the other ex-staffers, would approach the secretary a day after Madoff’s arrest and say, “Don’t worry. I will protect you,” she recalled.

“I said, ‘Protect me from what? What are you protecting me from?!’ ” the pint-sized pepperpot exclaimed.

While being cross-examined by Assistant US Attorney John Zach, Bongiorno continued to contend that she was duped by a Wall Street “rock star” just as thousands of more educated and sophisticated people were for decades – and that any wrongdoings she might have committed were done blindly by following orders from a boss she knew and trusted for 40 years.

She claimed even not knowing simple terms in the securities industry like “treasury bonds,” “Dow Jones average” and “S&P 500.”

However, Zach put her on the spot when he poked at her previous testimony about living a modest lifestyle despite being a multimillionaire. He flashed photos of a Bentley sedan and a $ 6.5 million condo in Florida that she had purchased with her earnings.

“It was one of my cars, but the feds took it away,” Bongiorno said of the Bentley.

When asked if she had any others, she said, “Yeah, two Mercedes.”

Zach also confronted her about why she “didn’t tell” the feds during a January 2009 sitdown that she doctored three years worth of account statements for a now-defunct Florida firm, Avellino and Bienes, which was shut down in the early 1990s following a Securities and Exchange Commission probe. The firm – which Zach said came up during Bongiorno’s 2009 interview – had collected customer funds and invested it in Madoff’s scheme.

After he pointed to repeated paperwork showing her handwriting doctoring earlier account entries, he questioned how she could leave such a key fact out during the interview.

“[Madoff] told me what to do,” she said. “If I didn’t say [anything], it was because I forgot. I was scared!”

Although feisty most of the day, Bongiorno broke down in tears when she asked by her lawyer, Roland Riopelle, about a wedding she attended for a friend’s daughter only weeks after Madoff’s arrest. It was also attended by many investors who lost big bucks once the $ 17 billion Ponzi scheme was uncovered.

“I was totally uncomfortable,” she said “I felt so bad for them, and I was embarrassed.”

Prosecutors say Bongiorno pocketed more than $ 14 million in fraudulent profits through a scheme and oversaw the investment-advisory unit at the center of Madoff’s scheme.

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Bronx tenants take landlord to court after 113 complaint calls to 311 fail to solve poor living conditions

New Settlement Apartments

Mercedes Batista, a resident 1505 Townsend for over 21 years, said that she has to all but carry her elderly mother through the lobby so she does not fall on the dangerously slippery floor.

Dial L for Lawsuit.

After a whopping 113 calls to 311 failed to restore heat and hot water at a Mount Eden apartment complex, tenants now plan on ringing up a lawsuit against their landlord.

Residents at 1505 Townsend Ave., where heat and hot water have worked intermittently since early December, filed a lawsuit in Bronx Housing Court, calling on landlord Townsend Realty Estates to address 194 open violations.

“Calling 311 is a tool, not a solution, to a problem,” says Lourdes De La Cruz, a tenant at the building. “Some times you need to take further action, like taking your landlord to court to continue to pressure them to make repairs.”

The lawsuit was filed after more than a hundred calls to 311 between Dec. 13, 2013 and Feb. 19, failed to resolve a littany of problems, from a lack of heat and hot water to exposed nails jutting out of tenants’ doors.

Other issues were nearly as problematic, including a lobby floor that’s routinely wet because of a leak from above.

“In order to take my elderly mother to the doctor’s office and walk through the lobby, I almost have to carry her to prevent her from falling,” said Mercedes Batista, a resident at the building for more than 20 years.

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Brooklyn Man Accused of Shooting NYPD Rookie Faces List of Charges

The man arrested for shooting a rookie police office yesterday in Brooklyn is now facing a slew of charges, including attempted murder and assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon.

The charges against Rashun Robinson, 28, of Brooklyn come as the EMTs who came to the aid of the officer are telling their story.

Shaun Alexander and Kadija Hall say they were off-duty and sitting in a car in the parking lot of a White Castle when they watched the whole shootout happen.

Police say Officer James Li and his partner, Officer Randy Chow, saw two men entering a B46 bus through the back door around 5 p.m Wednesday at Utica Avenue and Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights.

When the officers brought them off the bus, police say Robinson ran off, then turned and fired three shots.

Li was hit in the legs; Chow was not hurt.

Both officers fired back, but neither hit Robinson.

That’s when Hall and Alexander say they grabbed medical supplies from their trunk and rushed to the injured officer.

“He was saying, ‘I think I’m shot somewhere else.’ We were like ‘No, we’re gonna check you, we got you. Stay calm everything is gonna be all right.’ You know, he said, ‘I’m okay?’ I said, ‘Yes, you’re gonna be fine,’” Hall said.

“I don’t consider myself a hero. You know, we do this every day. We’re not the only one that does this. There’s a lot of us out there that doesn’t get the recognition every day because it’s our job,” Alexander said.

Robinson was arrested inside a nearby building.

A 45-caliber gun was recovered at the scene.

Police say he has six prior arrests in the city and an active drug warrant from Pennsylvania.

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Mice population freezing to death in NYC

Even the mice are shivering in in New York City.

This winter has been so cold that the city’s mice population are dying off — prompting 343 less infestations than last year, experts say.

Between October and February there were 3,171 mice infestation reports — compared to 3,514 during the same time period last year, according to the pest control industry advocacy group PestWorld.

“Mice populations fluctuate from year to year,” Harvard biologist, Hopi Hoekstra told the New York Times City Room blog.

“Because it’s been especially cold, it may have resulted in poor reproduction and many natural deaths.”

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