WHAT A HEEL: Remains Of The Day
While he was working at a job with the government of NYC, Natarajan Venkataram accessed the medical examiner’s computer system and with the help of his girlfriend, Rosa Abreu, stole $10 million in federal funds allocated to identify the remains of the victims of the September 11, 2001 terror attack on the World Trade Center. After the city recovered $7 million of this amount and Venkataram – who is currently incarcerated at the federal prison camp at Fort Dix, NJ – went to court to prevent authorities from seizing $400K from his bank account in India, The New York Daily News reports:
Arrested in 2005, Venkataram pleaded guilty to embezzlement and money laundering. He got 15 years in jail; Abreu got six.
Venkataram also was ordered to pay $2.9 million in restitution. Hoping to retrieve even more, the city sued him and won an $8 million judgment in 2009.
“We’ve been using that judgment to collect any other money that we can find of his,” city lawyer Eric Proshansky said. …
[Venkataram] claimed much of the money deposited in his name belongs to relatives and “should not be seized or forfeited.”
He said the money was in his name because India forbids “native residents” from keeping U.S. money in state banks.
Manhattan Federal Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald has characterized Venkataram's court filings as being "contradictory" and "misleading."
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