ROSLYN SCAMMER GETS UP TO 9
YEARS Pam Gluckin yesterday at Nassau
County court, where she was sentenced for her role
in the $11.2 million robbery.
September 20, 2006 -- The ringleader of the $11.2 million Roslyn School District rip-off on Long Island - the largest public-school theft in U.S. history - was sentenced yesterday to the maximum of three to nine years behind bars without ever saying she was sorry.
Pam Gluckin of Bellmore stood impassively in a Mineola courtroom as Roslyn School Board Trustee Meryl Ben-Levy told Judge Alan Honorof that Gluckin and her accomplices stole the good name of the district, along with the cash.
"She's where she deserves to be right now," said Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, "and, hopefully, that will bring some sense of justice to people in the school district."
Her co-conspirator, former School Superintendent Frank Tassone, was also due to be sentenced, but he suffered a possible heart attack and was hospitalized, delaying his final reckoning with the court.
The scam involved fake billings for nonexistent goods and services and the issuing of credit cards that Gluckin, Tassone and others used to charge luxury items to taxpayers.
Gluckin used the $4 million she stole to pay for beachfront second and third homes in the Hamptons and in Florida, along with Jet Skis and luxury cars.
"A cohesive and loving community has been broken apart," said Ben-Levy in her victims' impact statement.
"Our trust was violated, exploited, defrauded in a way so sinister, so deliberate, so seductive, so opaque that people were reluctant even to believe it, and full advantage of all of this was taken by the perpetrator," she said.
Gluckin, she said, "even went so far as to feign cancer to gain sympathy from parents and colleagues upon her sudden departure . . . like a thief in the night," said Ben-Levy.
She decried the fact that Gluckin, 60 - who took early retirement as part of a cover-up plan with Tassone - is still getting retirement pay from the district, even though she has made only half of her restitution and still owes $2 million.
"She never even said she was sorry," said one angry Roslyn resident in the courtroom.
Gluckin's lawyer, Victor Mevorah, said that's because his client was too choked up.
"She was emotionally shot down - she could not speak," said Mevorah, adding that Gluckin was "devastated. Her children are devastated."
Tassone, 59, fell in his Manhattan apartment Monday night and may have suffered a heart attack, said his lawyer, Edward Jenks, who put off the sentencing until Oct. 4. "He's been under tremendous strain," said Jenks.
Tassone, who admitted stealing $2 million, spent it on Caribbean cruises, gambling junkets to Las Vegas, jewelry, luxury autos and skin treatments - as well as $30,000 in laundry and other items like toilet paper and pet food.
Gluckin's niece, Debra Rigano, was also set to be sentenced, but her hearing was put off.
kieran.crowley@nypost.com
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09202006/news/news.htm then click on "Max in L.I.
School Rip-Off"