Crime & Safety

Crimes Nearby: Sands Point Art Dealer Pleads Guilty

Notable crimes and police activity in neighboring communities.

A Sands Point art dealer pled guilty Monday in federal court to participating in a scheme to sell more than 60 fake works of modern art to two New York art galleries.

U.S. District Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release that Glafira Rosales' guilty plea  "acknowledges her role in a sprawling fraud that involved the commission of phony artworks she represented as real, and her efforts to hide the proceeds of this massive scam in foreign bank accounts." 

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Rosales, 57, also pled guilty to conspiracy to sell the fake works, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering, and several tax crimes related to the fake art scheme. 

According to court documents, from 1994 through 2009, Rosales sold dozens of never-before-exhibited and previously unknown works of art (the “Works”) that she claimed were by the hand of some of the most famous artists of the twentieth century, such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell. She sold the Works to two prominent Manhattan art galleries for approximately $33.2 million. The galleries, in turn, sold the Works to victims for more than $80 million.

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A 2010 Porsche was stolen off the lot of Dancy Auto Group on Jericho Turnpike in Woodbury between Sept. 5 and 6, say Nassau police. Learn more

Cops: $3K Worth of Booze Stolen with Bogus Credit Card

A Queens man stands accused of ringing up more than $3,000 worth of liquor in two days using a bogus credit card in Old Bethpage. 

Nassau County Police charged Kenneth Ferguson, 21, of St. Albans, after cops learned he had returned to the Bottle Values Liquor Store on Old Bethpage Road Monday, attempting to buy more booze.

Police say Ferguson, on two separate occasions, Sept. 9, and again on Sept. 11, entered Bottle Values at 734 Old Bethpage Road and made purchases using re-encoded credit cards. The purchases over those two days last week totaled $3,056.00, police said.

Early Monday afternoon, the store's manager spotted Ferguson inside his store again and alerted a nearby Second Precinct police officer. In the interim, the manager had become aware of the previous fraudulent purchases, police said.

Detectives responded to the scene and an investigation revealed that Ferguson had used the re-encoded credit cards to make the unauthorized purchases. During the arrest, police found two other fraudulent bank debit cards.

Ferguson is charged with grand larceny, three counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument and identity theft.  



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