Subject: [NEXTEL-1] A Secret Service Worker Is Accused of Stealing Cars From Ground Zero

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2004 18:34:06 -0400

A Secret Service Worker Is Accused of Stealing Cars From Ground Zero
By ANDY NEWMAN

Published: April 14, 2004

Hundreds of cars were destroyed when the World Trade Center collapsed.
But several United States Secret Service cars listed as "crushed,"
prosecutors said yesterday, were actually stolen by the head of the
agency's motor pool at 7 World Trade Center, a retired police sergeant
who received a commendation for rescue work on Sept. 11, 2001.

 The man, William Bennette, 52, confessed to giving cars to his mother
and daughter after creating false paperwork on them, according to a
complaint by the Secret Service unsealed yesterday in Federal District
Court in Brooklyn.
Mr. Bennette pleaded not guilty yesterday to theft of government
property - five cars worth a total of $35,000 - but his lawyer, rather
than proclaiming his client's innocence, indicated that psychological
effects from 9/11 might have caused his behavior.
"It seems to me that we need to explain why a man of his stature and
exemplary life would be involved in something like this," said the
lawyer, Alan M. Lieberman.

According to the complaint, investigators found one of the cars, a 2001
Chevrolet Impala, at Mr. Bennette's home in Bayside, Queens, and two
others, a 2001 Ford Taurus and a 1998 Mercury Sable, at the home of his
mother in Manson, N.C. Two others, a 1994 Plymouth Acclaim and a 1994
Ford Taurus, were found at an auto repair shop in Queens.
The thefts came to light last month during a Secret Service inventory of
its cars. When agents called Larry's Auto Collision in Queens, a repair
shop it uses, an employee said that Mr. Bennette had told him a few
weeks before that two Secret Service cars were his for the taking, the
complaint says.

The agency found a memo that Mr. Bennette had helped prepare that listed
one of the cars found at the auto repair shop and three of the others as
having been recovered at ground zero and crushed at the Fresh Kills
landfill on Staten Island. The discovery prompted a search of Mr.
Bennette's desk, where, the complaint said, agents found a receipt dated
last June showing the sale of three of the cars - the two 2001 models
and the 1998 model - to a Danielle Bennette of Larry's Auto Collision.
Danielle Bennette is the name of one of Mr. Bennette's daughters. A man
who answered the phone at Larry's yesterday said he did not know the
name. The Secret Service never authorized the transactions, the agency
said. Federal prosecutors declined to say yesterday if anyone at the
auto collision shop would be charged in the scheme.

When called in to the Brooklyn field office for questioning on April 2,
Mr. Bennette, who joined the Secret Service in 1999 after retiring from
the New York Police Department, said he had forged signatures of agency
managers to transfer the titles of the cars, the complaint says.

Mr. Bennette was released after his arraignment yesterday, after his
wife signed a $75,000 bond. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to
10 years in prison.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/nyregion/14car.html
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