Seamstress to DHB exec, Hatfield linked to Brooks' fraud

The former chief operating officer of David Brooks' company is not a criminal but a woman who was obsessed only with manufacturing the best body armor because of her devotion to the U.S. military and because her father, an Army veteran, was shot and killed and had not been wearing a bulletproof vest, her defense lawyer argued Monday.

Sandra Hatfield, 55, is on trial with Brooks, founder and former chief executive of the onetime Westbury-based body armor company DHB Industries, on securities fraud and insider trading charges in federal court in Central Islip.

One of Hatfield's attorneys, Maurice Sercarz of Manhattan, also argued his client was a relatively unsophisticated high school graduate from Tennessee who worked for 19 years as a seamstress, knew little about accounting, finances or using computers, and didn't even have a computer at her desk at DHB. She depended on others for sending and receiving e-mails, Sercarz said.

Hatfield, once was the fourth-highest-paid woman executive on Long Island, earning $950,000 a year, faces fraud charges, including making $5 million through manipulation of DHB stock, and $690,000 in personal benefits.

Brooks is charged with making $185 million in the stock scheme and also illegally getting almost another $5 million in personal expenses. DHB is now Point Blank Solutions, based in Pompano Beach, Fla.

The chief government witness against Brooks and Hatfield, former co-worker and chief financial officer Dawn Schlegel, agreed under cross-examination Monday by Sercarz that Hatfield was "focused on the quality of the product . . . [getting] them to the men and women in harm's way."

Schlegel also agreed under cross-examination that Hatfield helped sew body-armor components and pack them for shipping to speed them to troops. Yet, she did not waver from her earlier testimony that Hatfield was involved in the fraudulent activities federal prosecutors have alleged.

Sercarz said Hatfield's devotion to the U.S. military came in part because both her husband and father had served in the armed forces. Sercarz noted Hatfield's father, Carl, became a correction's officer in Tennessee after retiring from the Army and was fatally shot in 1972 on a street by a former prisoner he had supervised.