That Long Island guy who decided to pay off the two mortgages on his $1 million McMansion by selling raffle tickets for his house at $50 a pop, and then burned all the suckers buyers by not holding the raffle at all and allegedly keeping the money? He's caught the attention of the Nassau county DA, who says 16,000 chumps people bought tickets from homeowner John Luongo. Or, as he puts it, they actually bought "portraits" of his five bedroom, 4 bathroom Massapequa home (painted "by a local artist") and received, as an added bonus, a "free" raffle ticket. But it looks like it was all scam!!! Last week Luongo posted this announcement on his From Raffles to Riches website: more ›

Things were looking grim for Long Island homeowner John Luongo last year. With a wife and child to support, he found himself $1.25 million behind on two mortgages he took out on his five bedroom, 4 bathroom home on a canal in Massapequa. Foreclosure loomed, but with his back against the wall Luongo came up with a plan: Start a $50 raffle for the property (which is appraised at $1.6 million dollars), use the money to pay off the mortgages, and walk away debt-free. He'd even throw in his 2007 Mercedes, valued at $95K! But would he find enough gullible rubes on the South Shore of Long Island for his scheme to work? more ›

The Staten Island Advance has been following the turmoil brewing between a Wiccan family and their neighbors. more ›

The NY Times has an article this weekend that focuses on the overused and so over H word. Hipsters! They're still here, in all their b&w print glory. This time they're settling down in Staten Island to make babies. more ›

City trash inspectors have been checking out neighborhoods all around town and say that the South Shore of Staten Island has the cleanest streets. The dirtiest? Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant, where residents tell the Daily News that drivers litter the streets. A church administrator said, "It seems every time we sweep, more trash comes." more ›

Yesterday, the special election held for a City Council seat in Brooklyn's 40th District brought some history: Dr. Mathieu Eugene (pictured on the left) became the first Haitian-born member of the City Council - and he has been called the "Haitian Sensation" in the media. more ›

If you live in the 40th District, an area that covers parts of Crown Heights, Flatbush and East Flatbush, you can vote in tomorrow special election to the seat that used to belong to former City Councilwoman - now Congresswoman - Yvette Clarke. And there's another special election for a City Council seat in Staten Island as well, so South Shore voters, head to the polls. more ›

The Department of Education will start to close five struggling high schools beginning next September. The schools are Urban Peace Academy and School for the Physical City in Manhattan and Samuel J. Tilden, South Shore, and the embattled Lafayette in Brooklyn. The DOE attributed the closings to, as the Daily News put it, "dismal graduation rates, consistently low test scores and lackluster demand." more ›

Beware of that cute stray cat you see in Staten Island - the borough is facing a a "frightening" spread of rabies. The Staten Island Advance reports that City Councilman Michael McMahon wants to convene an emergency task force made up of the health department and NYPD, as "23 raccoons, three skunks and three cats have been found with rabies" since April. A West Brighton man who found a stray kitten and brought it to a veterinarian was bitten while at the vet's - the staff suspects the kitten (which died a little later) had rabies. more ›

Two weeks ago, an diaper box of three abandoned kittens was found on the South Shore of Staten Island. And now it turns out that they probably had rabies, as one of the kittens positively tested for rabies. Vets tested a kitten that was put down after it became "lethargic, lost [its] appetite and developed blindness and paralysis"; its litter mate is being tested. The Staten Island Advance reports that the third kitten died after an illness, but was cremated, so tests cannot be performed. Twelve people are being treated for rabies (9 in Staten Island, 3 in NJ - a NJ family took two fo the cats), and the Department of Health wants people who think they might have been exposed to the kittens to call 311 (the kittens were found "in a vacant lot near Seguine Avenue between Direnzo Court and Hanover Avenue"). more ›

First the Staten Island Yankee's go on the block and then Bloomberg starts to get serious about cleaning up traffic on the fifth borough. We guess yesterday was just a SI news day, and the Advance seems to agree. more ›

Daniel Nester, Proofreader/Editor/Poet more ›