DA: DOT HELP workers were 'cooking the books'

Two state Department of Transportation workers were arrested and charged with entering fake help calls into their logbooks because they didn't want their roadside assistance program to lose grant money, law enforcement officials said yesterday.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice and acting New York State Inspector Catherine Leahy Scott said a joint investigation between their agencies led to the arrests of two supervisors in the DOT Highway Emergency Local Patrol (HELP) program.

Brian Miller, 55, of West Babylon, and Dominick Iannolo, 44, of Lake Ronkonkoma, were arrested Tuesday by district attorney investigators and charged with four misdemeanor counts of second-degree falsifying business records and one count of official misconduct, prosecutors said.

"Instead of helping drivers in need, these defendants were cooking the books by reporting work they never did," Rice said in a statement.

The men, who face up to a year in jail if convicted, pleaded not guilty Tuesday and were released without bail. They are to return Sept. 11 to First District Court in Hempstead.

"This is much ado about nothing," said Michael DerGarabedian, their Rockville Centre attorney. "In the long run, the government is going to be hard-pressed to find a motive for these allegations. It's a waste of taxpayer money."

Prosecutors said that in July and August 2010, Miller and Iannolo, who are supervisors as well as technicians with their own patrol trucks, made numerous entries into official logbooks claiming they provided roadside assistance when in fact they had not.

Some entries included real license plate numbers, but the car owners said they had never received help. Other entries contained license plate numbers that did not exist in state DMV records, prosecutors said.

The two supervisors were fraudulently trying to make themselves and the HELP program appear more productive to avoid possible cuts to state and federal funding that could imperil their jobs, Rice said.

Officials said the HELP program has 99 service trucks assigned to provide emergency assistance to disabled vehicles on busy roads during peak hours.

Scott said her office has been investigating the HELP program to root out fraud.

"It is essential that programs which operate utilizing taxpayer money do so with stringent safeguards and effective monitoring with employee accountability," she said.