Results tagged “craigslist”

The AP reports that Bronx resident Florian Penev was arrested by Connecticut police who say he "offered strangers paid sex with his wife in an Internet ad has been fined $2,000... Norwalk police say they arrested Penev and his wife, 36-year-old Zdravka Zotkova, in June after officers responded to their Craigslist ad, which offered sex with Zotkova at a Norwalk hotel." Penev pleaded guilty to misdemeanor prostitution conspiracy charge and paid a fine, while his wife "was allowed into a court program that will result in prostitution charges against her being dismissed if she completes it." And why was Penev advertising his wife? He said he lost his job as a graphic designer.

Remember that free building in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens? Unsurprisingly, the whole thing was a prank. Reportedly a local resident was fed up with the rundown building (located at 205 Parkside Avenue) and decided to put up a sign and a Craigslist ad advertising it for free. The prankster told the Daily News: "We want to see something positive happening with the building [not just a] festering rathole on what could be a lively thriving commercial strip."

Things are getting hairy for the NY Department of Education's pre-kindergarten program, so in their time of need they've turned to the proverbial port in the storm, Craigslist. Last year, the D.O.E. wasn't able to fill over 3,000 seats in the early education program, and forfeited $35 million in funding. Next Friday, October 31, marks the deadline for the D.O.E. to fill 5,400 seats this year, including 900 for full day programs, or lose millions in state funding again. So the D.O.E. has put up ad's on Craigslist to try to reach parents, among other last minute ideas.

We thought that using Craigslist to find someone to harass one's married lover's wife was bad, but Topless Robot offers up this NYC Craigslist ad. TR does warn with its headline that "The Most Awful Nerd in America Found," and that sensitive souls might be disturbed by it—plus "I don't think I'll ever be clean" again after reading it: "Need an amputee to complete my Halloween costume (Brooklyn)"...

The 22-year-old ESPN production assistant whose affair with ESPN analyst and former Mets GM Steve Phillips was revealed yesterday, was apparently very resourceful in trying to harass Phillips' wife. Brooke Hundley (dubbed a "tubby temptress" by the Post, which also offers "video geek to superfreak") placed an ad on Craigslist to hire someone to call Marni Phillips and break the news of the affair. Hundley's script for the caller: " As you can probably tell Steve hasn't been himself lately [pause and act like this is really hard for you to tell her]... It's because he's cheating on you with a young woman at our work."

Oh you Bushwickians and your tent cities. The latest in neighborhood tent news comes by way of a Craigslist posting, written by some younger folk who possibly have Where the Wild Things Are fort envy:

You don't have to browse the Craigslist "Rooms for Rent" section very long before realizing that there are many tenants out there looking for "not just a roommate, but a FRIEND." This weekend's Times Real Estate section follows the journey of one 3BR LES apartment trying to figure out the right balance between being friendly roommies, but not BFFs. One tells them of a horrific summer she had where a roommate was seldom home, “and I got really lonely,”

Gawker has a doozy of a Craigslist rental nightmare. Apparently someone rented an apartment out to America's Next Top Model winner CariDee English (cycle 7) and her boyfriend for two weeks. And two weeks was more than enough time for the couple to make their mark. The tenant shared the e-mail she sent to the pair with Gawker; highlights: "There was fake orange tan dust all over everything: the pillows, the sheets, the towels, the bathmat, the walls, everywhere. The icing on the cake were the short black hairs all over the entire bathroom, as well as an unidentifiable black sludge and lipstick smeared along walls. Fruit flies formed a thick cloud in the kitchen. Band-Aids stuck to the floor...Both puzzling and sickening... I was shocked...to find a hole in the middle of my living room wall that was made during your stay. Coincidentally it's about the same size as the remote control, which is also broken." Not surprisingly, the tenant is keeping the deposit—it's unclear whether she was tempted to enter the dirtiest apartments in the USA contest.

The Queens teenager accused of killing WABC radio newsman George Weber was back before a judge inside a Brooklyn courtroom yesterday. John Katehis, the sixteen-year-old who allegedly responded to Weber's sex ad on Craigslist and the brutally cut him up inside Weber's Brooklyn apartment, was denied bail yesterday in Brooklyn Supreme Court. The East Elmhurst teen has apparently not toned down his act from the time of the arrest when his MySpace page revealed Katehis calling himself a Satanist and posing for self-portraits with knives. When he showed up in court yesterday, the prosecutor noted to the judge, "He has even written on his sneakers 'Satan' and 'Arch-enemy,' " to go along with tattoos on his arm of a pentagram, "666" and the word "Diablo." A lawyer for Katehis said that the writing on his shoes simply referred to a heavy metal band.

       

The Statue of Liberty's crown reopened to the public this morning after being closed down since 9/11, making today possibly the biggest reason to celebrate the Fourth inside Lady Liberty since she turned 100 and reopened from renovations in 1986.

Songwriter and film director Joseph Brooks was charged with a 91-count indictment yesterday for using his status as a onetime-Oscar winner to lure women with dreams of stardom into his apartment so that he could allegedly rape and sexually assault them. Brooks, 71, primarily used craigslist to advertise parts in "his next movie" that led to sexual assaults on at least 11 women at his apartment on East 63rd Street, mostly over the last two years. An investigator told reporters, “The Oscar was used as a prop. This could be you, this could be you holding this Oscar. If you do what I say.”

A friend of Village Voice staffer Emily Brady recently posted a Craigslist ad looking for a roommate, and got something much better instead: An epically incoherent response from a candidate who starts off citing her "mature sophisticated tastes" in movies, beginning with Superman and ending with Gone With the Wind. The 1,500-plus word tome-deaf message further elaborates on her hypo-allergenic cleaning needs, her flexibility "w/ bathroom time in the mornings so,. U can have it first if U need it, except if I need it in emergency... {esp. PMS intervals..} hahaha!!!" and her cryptic "P/T sense of humor ?? :)" Excerpting anything from this maladroit masterpiece is like reducing Joyce to CliffsNotes, so do enjoy it in its full glory. But here's our favorite bit: The candidate's exhaustive inventory of music preferences, which ranges from Arnie [sic] Guthrie to the Phantom of the Opera to "lots of new songs from the WPIX channel for the shows of Gossip Girl & One Tree Hill, & Smallville (Superman series on thurs nite.8pm), etc....& Supernatural.. They DO a great job at bringing in new music through these very 'happening' shows..." So when can Grandma move in?

The babysitter who was charged with child endangerment, a misdemeanor, for letting an eleven-month-old baby drown in a seven gallon bucket of water was in court yesterday. The infant's parents made it clear that they would like to see charges upped to negligent homicide after prosecutors claimed that 28-year-old sitter Kristal Khan was passed out on cold medicine during the incident. Khan was watching the victim, James Farrior III, along with her own two children out of the Richmond Hills house she used as an unlicensed day care center (none was required); the baby's mother, Chrisann Josiah, had found Khan through a craigslist ad. Josiah says that when Khan called her to say that Farrior had been taken away in an ambulance, the babysitter was "real calm." Josiah said to the News, "I was planning his birthday and now I'm planning his funeral." Yesterday in court, relatives of Farrior's screamed at Khan, leading the judge to have one of them removed. The Queens DA said charges may be upgraded once an autopsy is complete.

The waitress who was rejected from her "dream job" as a bikini waitress at the Hawaiian Tropic Zone is now being accused of advertising herself as a Craigslist prostitute by lawyers for the restaurant chain. 21-year-old Melody Morales has filed a million dollar lawsuit against HTZ because a manager at the Times Square eatery rejected her application because he said that she had a "speech problem." The problem? It was "too ghetto."

If Craigslist wasn't in the doghouse enough these days with prostitution rings getting broken up and murders being linked to the site, here comes consumer investigator Arnold Diaz waving that judgmental finger of his at the site's real estate section. While lately it seems like there's actually been some optimism in the air about the price of apartments around town significantly dropping, along comes a scammer offering "The Homeboy Hookup" to rain on everyone's parade.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has announced a major bust of a Craigslist prostitution ring operating out of Queens. Room Service Entertainment ran their escort service out of Ozone Park and sent women to each of the five boroughs and beyond by advertising on the site's "Erotic Services" section. Today is the first day Craigslist is without their Erotic Services section, after calls from politicians to shut it down led them to replace it with the new staff-monitored "Adult Services" section, the place you can now turn if you're in need of a Shemale Italian Stallionette from State Island.

After standing by their "erotic services" section in the weeks following the "Craigslist Murder" of Julissa Brisman (pictured), the site has finally caved to pressure and announced that it will shut down the section that is home to many ads for illegal prostitution. Last week the heat on craigslist was turned up when three state's attorney generals (including Connecticut's) asked them to eliminate the section that also made headlines recently for connecting George Weber to alleged teenage murder John Katehis. The site will start a new section for "adult services" at double the advertising fee ($10 now) where each ad will be reviewed by a craigslist employee. In a craigslist blog obtained by the LA Times, a rep for the site wrote, "Unsurprisingly, but completely contrary to some of the sensationalistic journalism we've seen these past few weeks, the record is clear that use of craigslist classifieds is associated with far lower rates of violent crime than print classifieds." Erotic services will close down when the current ads expire in seven days, making a soapy body slide with a local blond one of New York's last offerings.

Step aside Scarsdale Mad Mom—a new case study in dysfunctional parenting has surfaced on Long Island, where Suffolk police have arrested a Hauppauge woman who they say used a fake "Casual Encounters" ad on Craigslist to direct nearly two dozen calls from horny men to her neighbor's home phone number. Why would she do this? Because she was allegedly trying to get revenge on the neighbor's 9-year-old daughter, who'd been fighting with her own child. 40-year-old Margery Tannenbaum was arrested Monday and charged with aggravated harassment for giving out the phone number in February to desperate Craigslist Casanovas looking for an NSA good time. Her lawyer tells Newsday, "My view on this is it's gone way too far. She's a good woman. She's a good wife. She's really a good person. I just can't see why anyone would want to put this in the news media... if the interest is about the children, which it should be. We're looking forward to our day in court." Oh, so are we!

John Katehis, the 16-year-old accused of fatally stabbing radio newsman George Weber 50 times, has pleaded not guilty in court today. Even though Katehis confessed to meeting Weber via Craigslist and heading to Weber's home, where they drank and did cocaine, his lawyer Jeffrey Schwartz blamed Weber, "[Weber] went by the name of SmotherBoy on Craigslist, which is a way he either lured or attemtped to lure other underage boys into his lair, supplied them, or at least Mr. Katehis, with drugs and alcohol, attempted to get him to do some sado-machochistic sex to him and the situation got out of control." Schwartz also told the Daily News, "He thought Weber was going after him and there was a struggle for the knife. There was a big struggle... [Katehis] was on cocaine for the first time, he wigged out. There's more to this case than everyone thinks. This kid was defending himself against a sexual predator."

Megan McAllister, the NJ woman engaged to suspected Craigslist killer Philip Markoff, is moving on with her life. She was spotted visiting him at his jail yesterday—without her engagement ring—and her lawyer said the two had a "candid, frank" talk and that "it's time to move on with other things in her life." McAllister, who met Markoff while they were students at SUNY Albany, had previously made public statements standing by Markoff and continued to, sort of: Her lawyer said this morning, "I think she feels that she’s supportive of him. The man that she knew and loved for four years is not the man that’s being portrayed in the media." Like how her fiancee allegedly looked for gays and transgender people, too?

Philip Markoff, the Boston University medical student suspected of killing a NYC woman at a Boston hotel, has been put on suicide watch. ABC News reports that prison officials apparently found shoelace marks around the 23-year-old's neck, "Markoff was moved from the general population of Boston's Nashua Street jail to a segregated unit where officers can keep a constant eye on him." In the meantime, the father of Markoff's fiancee Megan McAllister told reporters, "She's still confident in Phil. Other than that we’re saying a lot of prayers." Also: A Facebook page has been created: "Phil Markoff is Innocent Until Proven Guilty."

A SUNY Albany graduate and Boston University medical student was arrested for the murder of a NYC woman who advertised massage services on Craigslist. Boston police believe that Philip Markoff, 22, fatally shot Julissa Brisman at the Marriott Copley Place on April 14 and also charged him with the April 10 robbery and kidnapping of a prostitute, who had advertised on Craigslist, at the Westin Copley place. Apparently a search of Markoff's apartment "turned up guns and plastic ties" (Brisman's hand had a plastic handcuff) and police suspect Markoff may have been robbing—and resorting to violence—to pay off gambling debts.

On the heels of radio journalist George Weber's murder, apparently by a 16-year-old who responded to Weber's Craigslist ad requesting rough sex, the Post reveals, "The NYPD quietly shut down its highly successful Vice Squad operations on Craigslist without any explanation to the officers." Previously the group made arrests all over the city—"officers would regularly set up similar illicit meetings with prostitutes, usually in hotel rooms, by responding to ads and arresting all parties involved"—but closed it down 18 months ago. However, police spokesman Paul Browne tells the Post the Craigslist operation was actually shut down three years ago, due to a new commanding officer who thought it was "a waste of resources." Well, we suppose the NYPD will wait for the crime to come to them.

Sixteen-year-old John Katehis pleaded not guilty in a Brooklyn court last night to charges of second-degree murder and weapons possession after police say he confessed to the stabbing of WABC radio newsman George Weber earlier in the day. His lawyer said that details of the relationship between the two will emerge later and that he thinks Katehis "was used by an older gentleman." The teen apparently responded to Weber's Craiglist ad looking for rough sex.

According to Daily News and Post, a 16-year-old male confessed to killing former WABC Radio reporter George Weber. Weber's body was found in his Carroll Gardens apartment on Sunday and police believed he knew his killer, because there were no signs of forced entry in the apartment. Now, police say that the teen apparently answered an ad that Weber had posted on craigslist. A police source told the News, "He saw the victim's ad looking for violent sex and said 'I can smother somebody for $60' but it got out of hand."

A Rye Brook couple were apparently so financially strapped that they advertised the 23-year-old wife as a hooker on craigslist, according to police. Neighbors had complained about people coming and going to Richard Salvatore, 45,and Rachel Grome's townhouse that police started a investigation. Apparently a cop found a craigslist ad which "featured several sexy photos of Grome. The ad claimed she was a college student trying to make some extra cash." A neighbor said to WABC 7, "This used to be a quite area, a quiet street. It's kind of sad it's coming down to that. I'm just hoping that it gets better." The couple, who have two children, were charged with prostitution, though they told WCBS 2 they were "arrested by mistake." At any rate, Rye Brook Police Chief Gregory Austin told WCBS 2, "I feel like craigslist has really brought 42nd Street and Times Square right into people's home."

Remember that resourceful young Animal Collective fan who conned a bevy of real fans in the Craigslist ticket scam heard round the blogsphere? Well the plot thickens! NBC reports that, "a little over a week after a handful of hipsters around the city got ripped off, the scammer may have resurfaced on Craigslist, looking for his Williamsburg scam victim with 'cute bangs and funky glasses'." He even confesses in the ad, saying "I printed ten copies of my Animal Collective ticket and sold you one near the Lorimer stop. Maybe we can go to our next show together?" Sure, this has fake written all over it, but maybe, just maybe, this cold-hearted hustler listened to My Girls a few too many times and it softened him up.

It seems some enterprising young chap decided to make some extra cash by scamming people on Craigslist, allegedly selling (many, many) counterfeit tickets at inflated prices to the Animal Collective show at Bowery Ballroom last night. Brooklyn Vegan commenters are all abuzz about it today, with one explaining, "There was some bad shit going down with counterfeit tickets. As I was going in some people got stopped when the guy scanned their tickets. He asked them if they'd bought them from a guy (he said his name) on Craigslist for $100 and they said yes. He said they were the tenth people that night who'd got caught in the same scam. So someone out there made a LOT of money from last night's show." It seems that the alleged grifter was selling the E-ticket receipt, which can only be scanned one time. And since his name was on it, he's now the object of a serious hipster witch hunt; BV's commenters claim to have figured out his address and work information! We called the fella, and even emailed for comment, but unsurprisingly haven't heard back yet. [via Free Williamsburg]

Looking for a new dumbbell, or perhaps a surefire way to break into someone's car? One man's bad luck may just be your ticket to toned arms and free cd players. From a Craigslist post this morning: "Some douchebag thief threw a 50 lbs weight into one of my car's windows (parked in Douchebag Central, aka Murray Hill), taking an old CD player walkman from my glove compartment. The CD player was useless but the window cost me $100 to replace. I'd like to recoup the loss. Thankfully, said douchebag thief left the 50 lbs weight in the back seat of my car as a souvenir (You needed to lug around a 50 lbs. weight to do the job of 3 lbs. crowbar? No wonder you broke into my car and not one with something valuable in it. You're an idiot). Now you can benefit from my loss by buying this weight at a discount."