Dan's Papers - November 23, 2007

In case you're interested, there's a copy of Dan's Papers for sale this week on eBay this week for $10 plus shipping. To see the particulars, go to eBay and type in item number 200171691881. And there it is. It's our October 19 edition.

"Dan's Papers is a tabloid-sized paper from the Hamptons with a glossy-type cover," the pitch reads. "Playboy and New Yorker cartoonist Gahan Wilson did a great self-portrait for the cover of the October 19, 2007 issue. Cover shows pressure lines from being stuffed in vending machine."

Also up for auction on eBay this week is William Cunningham's classic 1964 Morris Mini coupe. What's surprising about this is that Cunningham knows nothing about it. He just happened to be on eBay browsing for other antique cars when he came across it. He'd put it in storage at Rita's Stables in Montauk for about a year and hired Peter McArdle of Sag Harbor to restore it, but about two months ago he got a call from Rita saying that his car had gone missing. It happened about a week earlier and at first Rita thought McArdle might have taken it, but he hadn't. She wondered if Cunningham had taken it. He hadn't either, and so they reported it to the police and made a stolen car insurance claim. It's worth about $7,500. Though the guy on eBay might be persuaded to sell it for less. Or maybe sell it several times over for less.

There was some other really interesting criminal mischief going on in the Hamptons this past week, mostly involving breaches of trust. Maybe it's due to the sudden downturn in the weather, or the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Maybe the Ten Commandments expired and need to be renewed. Can the Ten Commandments expire?

Karissa Masmussen, 27, of Westhampton has been charged with criminal possession of stolen property in the fourth degree, which is a felony. And her boyfriend Joseph Cusumano, 31, also living in Westhampton, has been charged with two crimes, the first the same as his girlfriend and the second a count of petit larceny, a misdemeanor.

According to the charges, what happened was that some people ate at World Pie Restaurant in Bridgehampton on August 17 and when they left forgot to take their credit card. Their waitress was Karissa Masmussen, and she found the card, but instead of returning it or giving it to the maitre de to return it, she walked out with it at the end of the night.

The next day, Karissa and Joseph took the card on a spending spree. They used it to buy about $600 worth of stuff. They also used it to withdraw about $1,400 in cash. As for the owner of the card, he remembered the next day that it had been left at World Pie, called to find out if anybody had found it, which they hadn't, and then reported the card lost and stopped payments on it. A month later they saw all the charges, reported the loss to the credit card company, who looked into it and came up with Karissa Masmussen and Joseph Cusumano. So there you are.

In East Hampton, too, somebody stole money from a customer. This was a little more straightforward but it was another breach of trust. According to the police report, a customer came in to the UPS store on Newtown Lane and gave the clerk working there, a 21-year-old young man named Juan Carlos Jadan Penaloza of Southampton, a check. It was for $25,000 and it was to be sent overnight to somebody somewhere. However, Mr. Penaloza pocketed the check and later took it across the street to a bank and cashed it by writing the name of whom it was made out to on the back. This didn't go over well. He is being held on $40,000 bail and has been charged with four felonies.

Meanwhile, down the street from the UPS Store on Railroad Avenue, there was big police action at the East Hampton Chamber of Commerce office. Someone at this office found a computer available for use to the general public with (gasp) pornography on the screen. They called the cops. A search for the individual who did this was commenced but the perp was not to be found. Finally, after surrounding the offending computer, police deleted the offensive material with a click of the mouse (sigh of relief), which ended the investigation.

Finally, there is the matter of Terri Gaines, a longtime resident of Montauk. She appeared in court in Islip last week and pled guilty to embezzling half a million dollars from the bank account of the Montauk Fire Department. She was able to do this because she was the hired bookkeeper for the department. Nobody realized it for a long time. Indeed, not for years. And that's because Ms. Gaines was who they hired to make sure everything was done right. But in the end you couldn't miss the discrepancies and so a professional CPA was called in. Ms. Gaines worked out a plea bargain and instead of twenty years in jail will probably spend a year or two there. She will also make restitution for all the money taken.

All these crimes involve a breach of trust. When do we get the Ten Commandments back?

About ten years ago, I was walking along 23rd Street on Manhattan's west side and came upon a homeless man looking to sell copies of Dan's Papers for a dollar each. He was carrying a stack of them.

This was pretty as you please, and, impressed by his enterprise, I took out a ten-dollar bill and told him I'd buy ten. He counted them out, but when he got to eight, he had run out of them.

"If you wait right here," he said, "I'll go to the warehouse and get some more. Don't go away."

He asked me to hold the eight copies. Then he ran off and soon returned with the other two to complete the transaction. And so then I gave him the ten dollars.