The charges have been dropped against the two men who were arrested for trying to cash a dead man’s $355 social security check. Back in January, David Daloia and James O'Hare made headlines with their foiled scheme to capitalize on O’Hare’s roommate’s death by pushing his corpse in an office chair up to a Pay-O-Matic check cashing joint in Hell’s Kitchen. They were arrested en route after a detective spotted the visibly deceased third man.......

If a bank teller told you had an unknown bank account with $5.8 million in it and the bank insisted it's yours, wouldn't you spend it? That's what Brooklyn resident Benjamin Lovell did - and now he's paying. Lovell shares the same name as an employee at Delaware company Woodlawn Trustees. Woodlawn asked that their Lovell be added to a Commerce Bank account with $5.8 million in it, but Commerce somehow mixed up the Social......

2nd Avenue and 5th Street [Fixed] by Chung Chu at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a partial facade collapse on East 148 St. in the Bronx, two pedestrians struck on 72nd St. and West End Ave. in Manhattan, a body found on Pioneer St. in Brooklyn. A developmentally disabled woman on Staten Island depends on Social Security benefits to survive, but the SSA keeps declaring her dead. A three alarm fire injured one person......

Midtown Sunset, by djwerdna at flickr Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a bank robbery on 31st St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan, an attempted sexual assault at Broadway and Gates Ave. in Brooklyn, and an aircraft incident at Laguardia in Queens. The Yankees Double-A farm team in Trenton has a mascot named Chase, who catches frisbees, brings water to umpires, and serves as a canine batboy. In his off hours, he managed to knock......

The desperate antics of old-school Hell's Kitchen residents are still making news. James O'Hare and David Daloia were arraigned for forgery, petty larceny and other charges when they tried to cash in O'Hare's roommate's Social Security check - while O'Hare's dead roommate's body was in a chair outside the checking cashing place. Police believe dead roommate, Virgilio Cintron, died of natural causes on Monday, the day before O'Hare and Dalaia tried to pull the scam.......

James O’Hare and David Dalaia, both 65, were arrested after they wheeled in the corpse of O'Hare's roommate to a check cashing office, attempting to cash in O'Hare's dead roommate's Social Security check. With a roommate like this... Virgilio Cintron had died (of natural causes) at age 66 on Monday in the Hell's Kitchen apartment he shared with O'Hare, who would have been well-aware of Cintron's $355 check. He and Dalaia tried to dress Cintron,......

There's finally been an arrest in the murder of Linda Stein. Yesterday it was reported that the police were interested in re-interviewing Stein's assistant, Brooklyn resident Natavia Lowery, who has a shady past involving identity theft. So it's not all that surprising that today the NYPD announced Lowery has been taken into custody. They found the 26-year old in Virginia Beach, apparently visiting her boyfriend.Police spokesman Paul Browne said Lowery "made statements implicating herself" in......

Gov. Spitzer made an abrupt shift from his stance of pushing forward with his plan to issue drivers license to illegal immigrants. He will be appearing with Dept. of Homeland Security officials in DC today to announce a compromise that involves two tiers of drivers licenses. The more secure version will comply with new federal Real ID standards that will be fully instituted in coming years. By 2013, US residents will be required to produce......

Gov. Spitzer announced yesterday that illegal immigrants will be able to get valid New York State drivers licenses if they provide a valid and verifiable foreign passport. Spitzer hopes that the change, which reverses a four-year-old Pataki-era decision, will legitimize the 500,000-1 million undocumented immigrants who are driving in New York. In a repudiation of the federal government's stance, the governor said "We will not become part of what is propagated on the federal level......

The Village Voice is reporting that Hilly Kristal was a millionaire. Not really surprising considering the owner of CBGB, who claimed to be broke, ran more than just a venue. Just look at all those kids wearing their Urban Outfitters t-shirts with the club's logo on it. Those cost money! So does everything branded with their logo at their own store.Just weeks after the legendary former CBGB owner passed away, his heirs—who thought Kristal was......

Never leave home without it: City Councilman Hiram Monserrate is proposing a bill that would allow all NYC residents to have identification cards, regardless of legal status. The NY Times reports that Monserrate was inspired by New Haven's ID program, which gives residents a card they can use as a proof of residency to open bank accounts, card to use on meters, library card, and more. Though the plan attracted much outside criticism, the plan......

Yesterday, the controversial immigration bill proposed by President Bush stalled in the Senate when both Republicans and Democrats could not come to a final vote. The bill, which neither party liked very much for different reasons, represented a historic to change immigration law, and both parties tried to work on a compromise that would satisfy most Senators. Sixty votes were needed to stop debate and move to a final vote, but there were only 45......

On the Gothamist Newsmap, one of the incidents is "Pedestrian Struck | West 51 Btw 9th & 10th Ave I/f/o Club Posh Manhattan, NY | 5/9/2007 2:14 a.m." It turns out that the pedestrian isn't any ol' pedestrian -- it happens to be Steve Green, millionaire real-estate developer, onetime member of the "worst landlords of the city" club, and high-profile gay divorcee. Green was leaving Club Posh, walking to his Rolls-Royce, when he was struck......

Fun statistics about what names are popular amongst new parents in the city. Most notably, the name "Angel" is now the most popular amongst newborn Hispanic boys. The NY Times reports this is the first time a "traditional Spanish name" has been number 1 since the 1980s - usually Hispanic parents choose Kevin and Justin. Angel is the most popular name amongst all males in Arizona and ranks #32 nationally. There are some suggestions about......

The Post has this crazy story about how a woman used various identities to attend schools like Columbia, Harvard, and California State. Naturally, she studied criminology and psychology! It sounds like a Law & Order: Criminal Intent multi-episode arc in the making. The Post reports that Esther Elizabeth Reed used the identity of "Brooke Henson" to attend Columbia as a graduate student, but was exposed when she tried to apply for a summer job as......

It's Law & Order: Concerned-Child- Who-is-a- Police-Officer Squad! An identity theft ring that targeted the elderly or people with "foreign-sounding" names was busted when a scammer called an old man, only to speak to an NYPD deputy chief - the man's daughter. Eleven people were indicted in Queens for duping people into giving up their credit card number, Social Security number, and other personal details. They would randomly call people, and one of the people......

Where to begin? Seventy-three year old Joanne Iversen had been telling her neighbors in a Bay Ridge apartment building that her husband, 78 year old Frank, was visiting friends when they stopped seeing him around a few years ago or that he moved upstate. But when her 38 year old son Paul, who wanted to reconcile since they have been estranged for many years when he told them he was gay, came to the house,......

City public schools allow students at high-poverty schools to take advantage of online tutoring, which the Department of Education contracts out to a number of firms. But now it turns out that one of the firms may be off the list of tutoring firms because it used tutors in India. The NYC DOE requires that all tutors have background checks if they have communications with students; Social Security numbers are required for the checks so......

The city has announced the top ten names city mommies and daddies have given their babies. Emily is number one for a 2nd year in a row (it was also number in 2003), while Michael is number one for the 20th year! From 1010WINS:For the 59,714 baby girls, the top names were Emily, Ashley, Kayla, Sarah, Isabella, Samantha, Sophia, Nicole, Olivia and Rachel. Brianna was knocked out of the Top 10 for the first time......

Federal, city, and local NJ authorities are facing a big "d'oh!" on their faces after mistakenly putting a Chinese-American woman in Rikers for 8 days last year. Because now the woman, Hui Ping Wang, who was arrested at JFK Airport when she was returning from a trip to China, is suing many law enforcement agencies, incuding the Department of Immigration, the city's Department of Correction, and Bergen County NJ's sheriff's office. Why all the fuss?......

There are outlandish schemes to avoid criminal prosecution or arrest, but the story of a Kevin Walker in Brooklyn takes the cake. The NY Times tries to explain how Walker almost managed to avoid prosecution by claiming he was dead, but couldn't because the U.S. Attorney who had been dealing with him knew better. Walker had been charged with $210,000 of fruad, "in part by using an account in the name of his restaurant, Jamaica......

- Remember the high school student who lost his leg when a car hit him? It turns out a freelance Post photographer helped save him - Hey, two Long Island beaches make a list of top 10 beaches in the country - An amazing and scary scam - a woman posed as a physical therapist after pulling an actual physical therapist's info off the Internet - A Manhattan man tried to auction off his......

Sometimes we think that Con Ed is just pretending to be incompetent to keep us on our toes. We mean, did they really manage to lose 15,000 Con Edison employees W-2 forms? In preparation for its taxes the utility was supposed to send two cartridge tapes containing all of its tax information in a package to JP Morgan Chase in Binghamton. But the Post is reporting that by March 10 it became clear there......

Remember the Transit Strike of 2005? That was fun, wasn't it? OK, well, we had a good time, which is why we are totally pumped over the possibilty that there might be a doorman strike come April 20. Of course, it helps our excitment that we've never lived in a doorman building... Anywho, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 28,000 residential doormen in the city in more than 3,500 apartment......

Anya Kamenetz, Author, Generation Debt: Why Now Is A Terrible Time To Be Young...

The problem with companies selling your cellphone records to anyone is becoming a bigger issue, as it got the Today Show sign of approval to be something Americans should be freaked out about - there was a segment this morning and of course no one wants people knowing who they are calling or who is calling them, especially those cheating spouses or corporate espionage types! Basically, if you give a company like Locate Cell a......

- CBGB's will stay open for another year on Bowery! Hell froze over! - News flash: Money is needed to complete the World Trade Center memorial - lots of it - A unanimous Supreme Court decision: Your Social Security benefits can taken away to pay your outstanding debts - Yikes: The two police officers accused of sexually abusing a Brooklyn woman a few weeks ago were indicted - four other women stepped forward to say......

These days, most people either rent movies with Netflix or On-Demand them, but some of us still have our trusty Blockbuster memberships, so we can stumble into a store to debate what to rent and only end up renting something we've seen many times before (The Cutting Edge, anyone? And did you know there's a sequel to The Cutting Edge for some sort of distribution in 2006, The Cutting Edge 2). But now, our last......

What havoc the Internet can wreak: A CUNY law student was Googling herself when she found two files of her law school classmates with loans, with details like their Social Security number, how much their loan was, and their direct deposit bank information. The woman, who was at the school library when making this discovery, told Newsday she screamed, "I was shocked, I was outraged. People have access to our names. Lord knows what they......

A judge ruled that Met Life can start moving towards a photo ID system for residents at Peter Cooper Village, BUT residents won't be barred from the building if they don't have a photo ID. Huh? This is like King Solomon cutting the baby in half, because Gothamist can just imagine some serious clashes between tenants without IDs and the management. This judge's order will stand until April 14, when the entire case is more......