Rape reported in bar
A woman told police on Saturday morning, Dec. 6 that she blacked out shortly after midnight while drinking in the Nassau Bar, 118 Nassau St. near Ann St. She said she woke up sometime later in a back room with a man on top of her trying to have sex.
The victim, 20, identified her attacker as a former N.Y.P.D. officer who frequents the bar, according to reports in the daily newspapers. But police said on Wed., Dec. 10 that no one has been charged and the case is under investigation.
According to published reports, friends of the victim who had been drinking with her that night said she often drank heavily and suffered memory blanks. Employees at the bar, where barmaids wear bikinis, told news media that no such incident occurred there.
Subway D.O.A.
A victim identified only as a black man, apparently homeless, was struck by a northbound E train near the Canal St. station at 5:22 a.m. Sat., Dec. 6, police said. He was declared dead at the scene.
Subway sleeper
Police arrested Barry Elmore, 52, during the early hours of Sun., Dec. 7 and charged him with slashing the pocket and stealing the wallet of a man sleeping on a train as it entered the E train station at Church and Fulton Sts. at 3:10 a.m. Elmore was arrested as he was using the victim’s credit card at the MetroCard machine in the station mezzanine, police said. He was being held in lieu of $10,000 bail pending a Dec. 12 court appearance.
Tribeca man indicted
Carl J. Butcho, 26, of Duane St., was indicted for grand larceny for stealing a total of $377,649 in unauthorized credit card charges, mostly at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, according to a spokesperson for District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
Butcho, who runs TriBeCa Chef, a catering service, made purchases of $361,049 between Aug. 11, 2007 and Sept. 28, 2007 at the hotel using the credit card of a friend who works for Ernst & Young, the indictment says. The purchases included spa treatments, limousine rentals, dog walking and luxury goods from the hotel’s personal shoppers. Butcho is also charged with making $8,000 in purchases with a credit card belonging to a Ritz Carlton dog walker who lent him her card.
Butcho told the friend and the dog walker that he was the heir to a large fortune and would soon have access to huge sums of money in order to induce them to lend him their credit cards, according to prosecutors. There was no fortune and the credit card owners were stuck with the debt they could not pay.
Lawrence Fedella, Butcho’s lawyer, said the charges were false, adding that the friend signed the credit card receipts and was trying to shift the blame to Butcho.
Knock-off shops shut
A Wednesday morning Dec. 3 raid on 17 storefront stalls in two buildings on the south side of Canal St. between Centre and Lafayette Sts. ended with the stalls padlocked and about 500 bags of counterfeit trademarked handbags, wallets, jewelry and perfume seized, according to the Office of Special Enforcement.
The raid, before the start of the day’s business, hit stalls that sold non-counterfeit goods in the front and counterfeit goods in the rear behind locked doors that could only be opened electronically by the merchants in front of the shops, according to Jason Post, spokesperson for Special Enforcement, a multi-agency division in the mayor’s office.
The Department of Buildings put vacate orders on the shops because of the potential danger to shoppers and employees in the locked rear areas.
The shop managers and owners of the two buildings at 244 and 246-250 Canal St. were named in a civil suit. At 246-250 Canal St., where there are permits for four shops, the raid targeted 15 storefronts stalls. No one was arrested in the raid and there were no criminal charges.
— Albert Amateau
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