Category: politics
Tag: sea cliff, mayor, election, booty, vanishing
Description: The mayor of Sea Cliff, an affluent town on Long Island, New York, had promised its citizens she’d find the town’s $3.6 million in stolen historical artifacts. She hired a team of former “Pirate Hunters” to do it. Now, she’s been accused of election fraud.
In 2016, the residents of Sea Cliff elected two outsiders to office. One was Aaron Samson, a building contractor, who became the mayor. The other was Christopher Schoppa, a 38-year-old former Marine who was elected as a board member to the Sea Cliff Historic District Commission.
At around the same time, Schoppa was selected by the mayor and a board member to help solve the mystery of a cache of treasure: $3.6 million worth of valuables, including silver candlesticks, a vase, and a watch, believed to have been stolen more than 100 years ago by the notorious gangster George “Humpy” McManus.
The artifacts had been found in Sea Cliff. Now, it was up to Samson and Schoppa to retrieve what was missing.
But Schoppa, who was paid $19,000 for the job, has since become the focus of an investigation by Rosalyn Bartsch, a longtime political opponent of Samson’s who is now the acting mayor of Sea Cliff. Bartsch charged Schoppa with election fraud in connection with his candidacy for village attorney.
Schoppa, a former slum landlord with a criminal record of assault, failed to disclose on a financial statement filed in connection with his candidacy his business relationship with a site that paid him exorbitant fees to run websites, as first reported by the website Gothamist.
But he isn’t the only one drawing scrutiny.
In a statement provided to Gothamist, Schoppa, who has denied any wrongdoing, said Bartsch was just trying to “intimidate me into dropping out of the race for village attorney. I am done being bullied. The residents deserve better. I am in a better position to assist the community than to be silenced.” But Gothamist reports that since launching her investigation, the police in Sea Cliff have searched Schoppa’s apartment in Elmhurst, Queens, where he impulsively moved last year, “seeking information about Samuel Samson, a real estate broker, and Aaron Samson, the mayor.”
Samson, who has been implicated in elections thefts in the past, has dual roles in his program to recover the missing artifacts. As the local law enforcement officer in charge of the case, he also happens to be a person of interest.
Last year, de Pasquale sold Gothamist his services for $114,000 to conduct an internal investigation into allegations of corruption at Gothamist. A series of stories published by the news organization as a result of the investigation led to the resignation of the news organization’s editor-in-chief, the director of product and development, and an undisclosed number of other staff members. Based on the passage above, How is Rosalyn Bartsch investigating Schoppa for election fraud in connection with his candidacy for village attorney?
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