Next time, use a bank

From CBS 2:

Workers at a scrap yard in Queens were looking for a couple who lost their life savings on Saturday.

Thousands of dollars were found inside of a refrigerator that a man brought to Atlantic Recycling in Ozone Park. What the man apparently did not know was that his wife had stashed the couple’s life savings inside of the appliance.

The woman showed up, but left without giving workers her name when she was told that it would be impossible to find the money. One worker took it upon himself to track down the cash and he did.

“Sure enough the fridge was there. The only thing in the fridge was her money, exactly where she said it was,” the worker told CBS 2, “In this heat I worry about her getting stressed out over losing that money.”

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Digging for missing mafia members

From DNAinfo:

The FBI began digging for a body Monday in the former Queens home of notorious mob power James “Jimmy The Gent” Burke, who was famously portrayed by Robert De Niro in the movie "Goodfellas," sources told DNAinfo New York.

FBI Evidence Collection specialists and agents from the Organized Crime Division descended into the basement of Burke’s family home at 81-48 102 Rd. in South Ozone Park about 8 a.m. armed with jackhammers and sledge hammers.

Sources said the feds recently obtained information from a new cooperating informant linked to the Gambino and Bonanno crime families who told them he believed a hood who disappeared decades ago was buried in Burke’s basement or backyard.

The sources say the dig is not related to the fabled 1978 Lufthansa Heist, where Burke, portrayed as Jimmy Conway by De Niro in "Goodfellas," and his fellow wiseguys pulled off an $8 million robbery at JFK, which at the time was the largest robbery in history and was featured in the film.

Many of the suspects eventually were murdered.

Only the body of Burke's closest friend, Thomas DeSimone, who was played by actor Joe Pesci, has never been found, but sources say they are not looking for his remains at Burke’s home.

Looks like Jimmy the Gent had an illegal conversion in his cellar.

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Ozone Park soil contamination to be removed

From the Queens Chronicle:

Work started this week on the controversial project to remove toxic chemicals from a former industrial site in Ozone Park.

The work along 100th Street between 101st and 103rd avenues will clean eight bays under the former Ozone Park LIRR station that were once used for storage by Ozone Industries, an aircraft parts manufacturer that operated out of an adjacent factory until the late 1990s.

Ozone Industries placed drums in the ground below the bays that contained a chemical called trichloroethylene, or TCE, a substance linked to some forms of cancer and problems of the central nervous system. The chemical is used in aircraft manufacturing.

For the past decade, End Zone, the successor company to Ozone Industries, has been working with the city and the state to remediate TCE contamination. The eight bays where the work will be done has been labeled a state Superfund site.

John Durnin, a representative from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, spoke to Community Board 9 about the status of the project that had been scheduled to begin last month. Durnin did not say what caused the delay, but did detail what kind of work will be done.

He said the concrete floor of the bays will be removed and the soil will be excavated.

“The contamination is in the soil,” Durnin explained. “It will be trucked away in sealed trucks.”

Air monitors will be placed around the site and workers will be assigned to shifts to make sure no dangerous level of the chemical is recorded.

“The work is going to be done inside the closed bays,” Durnin said. “There will be no outside work done. The contaminated soil will not be exposed.”

Some of the contamination will be vented into the air, but only trace amounts that the DEC says is not dangerous.

Of course not.

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