Shot on Lower East Side
Seventh Precinct police responded to a report at 2 a.m. Mon. July 31 of a man shot at the corner of Baruch Pl. at E. Houston St. They found a 17-year-old male with a bullet wound in the chest. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he was said to be in stable condition. Police declined to identify the victim because of his age and are investigating the case.
Soho jewelry heist
Three men, two waiving handguns and the other carrying a hammer, stormed into a Soho jewelry store on Monday afternoon, smashed a showcase and fled with jewelry valued at more than $300,000, police said. A few minutes later, two others involved in the robbery as lookouts, were arrested in Lower Manhattan, police said.
The three who entered Marisa Perry Atelier, 154 Prince St., shouted, “This is a robbery.” They forced Marisa Perry, a partner, to lie on the floor and held her husband, Douglas Elliott, at gunpoint before fleeing with the merchandize in a car parked at the curb.
Another car with two other men parked at the curb followed and continued west while the first car sped north on Sullivan St. Officers on scooter patrol, Jose Torres and Anthony DiFrancesca, followed the second car and were able to stop it with the help of a patrol car at Greenwich and Murray Sts. They arrested Danjuma Clarke, 21, and Edward Watkins, 24, both of Brooklyn.
The two face charges of robbery, possession of stolen property, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon. Police on Wed. Aug 1 were still seeking the three who fled with the jewelry.
“They need to catch these bandits,” Perry said in a telephone interview. “I’m glad they were smart enough not to pull the trigger.”
Perry said that she was shaken up after the incident and will take precautions to prevent it from happening again.
“Normally, I keep my door open so everybody can come in — I love everybody… but now, I’m definitely more jaded and I had a lot of security measures before, but I’m even taking more security measures now,” Perry said, adding that she would install more cameras and a buzzer for the door.
“I will decide who comes into my shop or not,” she concluded.
Broker fraud
A grand jury on Aug. 1 indicted eight stock brokers for defrauding customers of $13 million by inducing them to buy shares of a little traded New Jersey company to artificially pump up and manipulate its price, according to Manhattan’s district attorney office.
The indictment charges the defendants, led by Christopher Janish, 36, of Parsippany, N.J. of using a succession of three Wall St. brokerage firms to sell shares of Stratus Services Group Inc., an office temp service whose C.E.O. is Janis’s uncle.
The defendants are charged with starting the scam in April 2000 at Hornblower & Weeks, and moving on in July 2002 to Delta Asset Management Co. and again in 2004 to Essex & York, a company that the defendants completely control. Hornblower has since gone out of business and Essex & York is a corporate defendant in the indictment.
The brokers received bonuses of as much as $10,000 a month for pushing Stratus shares, according to prosecutors. Janish is charged with creating and using two dummy firms to funnel payments to his salesmen — Joseph Barile, 36, of Long Branch, N.J., Arthur Caruso, 33, of Secaucus, N.J. and Marat Beksultanov, 33, of Brooklyn, who are all named in the indictment.
They and the dummy corporations are charged with racketeering, grand larceny and securities fraud.
— Albert Amateau and Janet Kwon
WWW Downtown Express
