Newsday (New York City and Long Island NY daily)Thursday 10 January 2008
Pair take friend's body
to cash benefits check
by Rocco Parascandola
rocco.parascandola@newsday.com
It's not every day - even in New York - that two men are charged with attempted forgery, attempted possession of a forged instrument and petty larceny for allegedly trying to cash their dead friend's Social Security check, with the dead friend sitting in a chair outside a Hell's Kitchen check-cashing shop, no less.
But that's the trouble two suspects - David Daloia and James O'Hare, both 65 - got themselves into when they were allegedly caught in the act Tuesday afternoon.
Their dead friend, Virgilio Cintron, 66, appears to have died of natural causes within the past few days, though the medical examiner's office said yesterday further tests are needed to determine the cause of death.
The bizarre incident resembled "Weekend at Bernie's," the 1989 comedy in which two friends pretend their murdered boss is really alive as they haul him around the Hamptons while partying.
Daloia and O'Hare, both unemployed, plopped Cintron into a chair and wheeled him from his West 52nd Street apartment to Pay-O-Matic Check Cashing, a Ninth Avenue business several blocks away, police said.
Cintron stayed outside - what choice did he have? - while his friends stepped inside. The clerk, police said, knows Cintron as a regular customer and said he needed to sign his own $355 Social Security check.
The suspects went back outside to get him, but by then Cintron, half-dressed and slumped over, had caused quite a stir, with a number of passersby alerted to the only-in-New York phenomenon.
One of those quite interested was [police] Det. Travis Rapp, who saw the scene as he ate lunch nearby. He called for backup, and the suspects were arrested moments later.
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Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
