Dan's Papers -February 27, 2009 - MONTAUK EMBEZZLER: QUESTIONING at SENTENCING

The saga of Montauk's Terri Gaines, who was convicted of embezzling just over $500,000 from the Montauk Fire District between 1999 to 2005, came to an end in a Suffolk County Courtroom in Riverhead. That conclusion included restitution of the money through a sale of property and payment from an insurance policy, and a one-to-three-year jail sentence. The well documented case against Gaines, a former secretary and treasurer for the District, included many checks she wrote to cover gambling escapades to out of state casinos and even paying her son's private school tuition. In an unusual turn of events at the sentencing, Gaines questioned the amount of money she said she embezzled at the plea bargain, claiming it was really about half of what she'd agreed to. Judge Gazillo cut her off, reportedly saying, "Your last vacation was on the fire district, this one is on the state."

Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas J. Spota called Gaines' crime, "the most egregious of them all." The case had elements of a Greek tragedy. The well respected fire official's daughter, a life-long resident of Montauk and mother of four seemed to get caught in a behavioral pattern that, unchecked, grew and manifested itself in what Spiros A. Moustakas, an assistant DA assigned to the government corruption bureau, called, "the single largest theft the D.A.'s office has prosecuted recently."

The property Gaines sold to make restitution was actually not her home, but a house on Middle Highway in East Hampton that she inherited from her grandfather, according to her attorney, William T. LaVelle of Patchogue.

At the Montauk Laundromat the mood was mixed. A local businessowner, who went to school with Gaines, couldn't get past the human side of a well-known and liked woman doing something very bad, and now going to jail. "It's tragic," she said, "it's very tragic."

At the beer store next door, someone associated with the Montauk fire department said, "Now she can do her time and get on with her life. These last few years have been hard on her and all of us who know her."

No one can quite understand how or why Gaines did what she did - including Gaines herself who reportedly said she knew that what she was doing was wrong, but didn't know how to stop or "get out of" a pattern of writing Montauk Fire Department checks to pay her own expenses.

The one-to-three-year sentence will be served, perhaps shortened for good behavior. This shamed daughter of Montauk will return home to both her friends and the people she wronged. She will spend many nights looking at bars and walls thinking about what she did.

In black and white, Terri Gaines is not a victim - she is a convicted felon. But those who live in Montauk know her also as a neighbor, schoolmate, mother, daughter, friend. She did a huge wrong and luckily she had the resources to make restitution. The woman at the Laundromat summed up one view of it.