Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a stabbing on 168th St. and Hillside Ave. in Queens, a sexual assault at Stanton and Attorney Sts. in Manhattan, and a missing child on Himrod St. in Brooklyn. Artist Eve Mosher is outlining in chalk the high water lines that floods will reach every four years by 2080 if global warming continues unabated. The project can be seen at her site highwaterline. Six-year-old Natalie Shea is now a... more ›

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A large fight at Heritage High School in Manhattan, a trench rescue in Queens, and a suspicious substance at Canal & 6th Avenue
• Aw, Hakan Yalincak, the NYU student who conned people out of millions, filed an ethics complaint against his lawyer; his lawyer's lawyer told Yalincak (who faces prison time), "You are the ultimate evil person. Have a good time in jail. Watch out for the bathrooms."
• Peter Rivera, assemblyman from the Bronx, wants to make "An Inconvenient Truth" required viewing for k-12 students, but there are many questions from the Empire Zone, like will kindergarteners understand and does this mean kids will have to see it every year for 13 years?
• Christopher Street at night is a "hell hole," according to Curbed readers hashing out what to do when youths hang out in and around the building
• Awesome: The NY Post Photoshops McGreevey into a priest's outfit as news that the former NJ governor may be headed to a seminary catches on
• State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver censured a Republican assemblyman from Buffalo after it turned out the married-with-two-kids Michael Cole spent the night in an intern's bedroom; Cole says he slept on her floor because he walked her home from a sports bar and felt too drunk to drive home
• Chinese authorities have arrested the head of a company that added melamine to wheat gluten that eventually ended up in pet food
• Spider-Man sold out? Go see Barbara Stanwyck at BAM!
• Staten Island police say that a man exposed himself to a woman in Silver Lake Park earlier this week, but the suspect, Russell Farriola, who happens to be the "number one graffiti vandal" on SI denies it

Two years ago, many people were intrigued when an NYU senior had to miss his graduation - because he and his mother had committed $43 million in hedge fund fraud. Hakan Yalincak's parents had even pledged $21 million to NYU, giving the university a $1.25 million check as a start. But now that Yalincak and mother Ayferafet Yalincak have pleaded guilty, the next chapter in the saga is Chapter 7: Bankruptcy and a request from NYU. more ›

Untitled, by Brunocerous. Tag yours with "gothamist" on Flickr if you want us to use them. more ›

business out of the dorms, as Julia Diaco found out with her drug operation. Anyway, Gothamist has this suggestion for He, at least for the lack of cash issue: Photoshop and/or a halfway decent color copier. more ›

She has McCormack’s number, but only nine of ten digits. A little later, the phone rings. Apparently, it is McCormack. Jackie passes me the phone. He doesn’t want his full name mentioned, but he says that, yes, he receives a scholarship from the Yalincaks. It's so House of Games. Or even The Spanish Prisoner. And what's even more crazy about the article is that the Halincaks lie and their stories turn on a dime. But, the Halincaks still have an NYU building named after them. more ›

New York University has had a remarkable rise into the top echelons of universities, in terms of a strong academic programs and desirability from prospective students, but it's also had it rough. Over the past few years, there were a spate of student suicides and outcries over its rapid downtown development. And now, there's a spate of deep-pocketed donors who have turned out to be frauds. Alberto Vilar, a supposed billionaire philanthropist, pulled the wool over NYU's eyes, as well as a number of other arts organizations, after his May arrest for fraud. Vilar had donated $23 million to NYU, to start a "Rhodes-like program" for arts scholars in 2001. However, Gothamist believes we read that no students were accepted into the program because there was never any money. D'oh! more ›

Gothamist cannot get enough of the story of Hakan Yalincak, the NYU senior who is currently in a New Haven jail on charges that he orchestrated a multi-million dollar check kiting scheme. Yesterday, he was denied bail after authorities found a counterfeit check, plus the same stock of paper Yalincak allegedly created a $25 million check from. It's totally a Frank Abagnale, the subject of Catch Me If You Can! Yalincak's defense attorney tried to soft-pedal the crimes, saying that even though he tried to pass fake checks at the banks, there were no victims. Plus, even though the family was behind on its rent and had foreclosed a house, they had money in Turkey! Gotta love defense strategies. more ›

As Gothamist reads more and more about the NYU senior, Hakan Yalincak, and his scamming ways, the more we think we're reading a David Mamet play. The NY Post says that Yalincak and his mom rented an office "furnishing it with mahogany desks and plush, silk-upholstered chairs," "ordered thousands of dollars in computer equipment, hired temporary workers to monitor the Bloomberg stock tickers and shuttled investors in and out of the conference room." The man they rented the space from, Paul Ardaji, says that while the Yalincaks claimed they were started a hedge fund, they had their meetings all in one day and never showed up again - the computers weren't even online either. Even Bloomberg LLP has the FBI trying to help recover money they never got for the computers! The mother and son (and possibly father) are being sued by people who want their money back, and it seems that the Yalincaks bought a Porsche and Tiffany jewelry with the money. The mother, Ayferafet Yalincak, had actually served two years in an Indiana prison for practicing medicine without a license. Are you kidding? The Daily News says that perhaps the son was trying to "help his mom recover from an earlier scam," which sounds not only like The Grifters, but something two steps ahead of the Sante and Kenneth Kimes scandal. And now the question is whether or not the $21 million gift to NYU has real money behind it. more ›

An NYU senior with a major in math was arrested in his family Pound Ridge, NY home when bank and postal officials discovered he had been shuffling about $43 million in fake, certified check between banks in Greenwich, CT, and Switzerland, where there are many, many banks. Hakan Yalincak opened up a number of fake corporations and deposited fake checks into the bank accounts here and overseas. With millions in "phantom money" in each, he then transferred $2.5 million to a new account in Greenwich. It was when he tried to withdraw $1.7 million that Yalincak was caught, with bank officials wise to his scheme. At the court hearing, where his mother was weeping, the judge said that Yalincak had to stay in a Providence detention center until a hearing on Thursday, and Yalincak wailed, "I have a graduation on Wednesday." The Daily News had this comment from a twentysomething NYU alum: "Obviously, they're teaching them something at NYU." more ›