A woman who pleaded guilty to stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Staten Island Jewish cemetery paid $1.1 million in restitution as part of a civil settlement agreement, and was sentenced this week to five years’ probation. Ilana Friedman, a paid board member who together with her husband Arthur Friedman operated and controlled…
Nine months ago, Natalia Demidova crouched on the second floor of her Staten Island home and watched her neighbor’s SUV race a 10-foot wave down the street. The wave crashed through Demidova’s quiet residential block in the South Beach neighborhood and flooded her home with more than two feet of water. Demidova is among the…
A top official at a Staten Island Jewish cemetery admitted looting the institution of $1 million, diverting fees for headstones and plots to personal expenses including dinners, jewelry, theater tickets and even Costco bills. Ilana Friedman, 51, was the No. 2 administrator at the United Hebrew Cemetery while she carried out the scheme alongside her…
Still think the climate isn’t changing? Here’s one for the record books: an unusually fierce spring storm system on Tuesday brings record breaking blizzards to South Dakota, Nebraska, ice storms as far south as Oklahoma. Winter storm warnings stretched from Utah to Minnesota on Tuesday, said the Washington Post weather blog. NBC News reported temperature…
Some news, apparently, is fit to print, but not too boldly. Take, for example, the demure self-censorship on display Saturday in the New York Times’ eye-opening report, headlined “On Island, Largely Blue, an Exception: Trump Tower,” on the handful of New York City neighborhoods that voted for Mitt Romney over President Obama. Overall, the city…
A member of Berlin’s Jewish community with family in hard-hit Staten Island, N.Y. has started a clothing drive for those affected by superstorm Sandy. Berliners have been encouraged to bring clothing and small toys to the Chabad center in Berlin on Tuesday and Wednesday. The items will be brought to the American Embassy and Red…
An Orthodox Jewish charity known for its omnipresent radio jingles has lost a federal lawsuit over $300,000 in scholarships that were allegedly promised to Jewish day school students. A federal jury found in favor of the school on January 12 for the full amount demanded. A charity closely affiliated with Kars4Kids, which runs a high-profile…
Looks like we’ve got true-life sequel material for “Holy Rollers,” the just-released film in which a young Orthodox Jew gets lured into drug running. Bail was denied Thursday for Jonathan Braun, the 27-year-old Staten Island boychik accused of smuggling more than 100,000 kilos of marijuana from Canada into the U.S. — all while living with…
