Escort service: Madoff and his nanny, ex-cop Nick Casale.

Many of Casale's problems stemmed from a high-profile 2003 saga in which he and the NYPD's former police chief, Louis Anemone, went to the Times itself to blow the whistle on what they said was corruption at the MTA. Both then were fired by the MTA.

Casale and Anemone, longtime sidekicks, still work together at a busy P.I. and security firm, Casale Associates. (There's not a word about the 2003 MTA fracas in either's bios there.) It's probably a lively place. The Times memorably said of Anemone when he resigned in 1999 that his "browbeating style was credited for both bringing down crime and elevating the blood pressure of many officers." …More >>

Bush 2000 campaign operative Spargo's career move to the NY Supreme Court bench ends with a prison sentence for extortion, bribery.

Thomas Spargo, an Albany-based judge trying cases in Ulster County, had been convicted in August of soliciting a bribe and attempted extortion. He was ousted from the bench in 2006.

Spargo was an election-law specialist and GOP loyalist who worked for George W. Bush during the 2000 Florida recount boondoggle and was spotted as one of the "Brooks Brothers rioters" trying to stop the recount.

Some observers are calling Spargo's current troubles "karma." …More >>

The locals at Freddy's Backroom -- a cozy Prospect Heights bar with a rabble-rousing clientele -- could be found getting sloshed at an especially early hour on Sunday. At high noon, and with the assistance of a group of mildly drunken onlookers, manager Donald O'Finn was fastening a giant metal chain to the bar's wooden counter.

The locals then handcuffed themselves to the chain and spent the afternoon watching football, drinking whiskey with their free hands.

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Shaya Boymelgreen can get you a room with a view.

​New York, circa 2005 -- the building boom is transforming neighborhoods like Williamsburg, DUMBO, and the Financial District.

During that period, Shaya Boymelgreen and his partner, diamond magnate Lev Leviev, built condos faster than just about anyone. Their developments had names like the NOVO Park Slope or the Beacon Tower, a 23-story skyscraper in DUMBO. They had tenants like Gwyneth Paltrow, and boasted ballet studios and movie theaters as a few of their amenities. One museum-like building on Wall Street is called "Downtown by Starck," after the French interior designer, Philippe Starck (Who designed every room and who, for an undisclosed amount, will also custom design an apartment's furniture). When Boymelgreen threw a party for colleagues, the musician John Legend was the guest act. In Brooklyn alone, he added more than 1,500 apartments.

What a difference a recession makes. Buildings are suddenly harder to fill, especially when it gets around that their construction has been rushed and is shoddy.

​Former Washington Heights City Councilman Miguel Martinez was sentenced to five years in prison this afternoon for stealing more than $100,000 in funds that were intended for non-profit groups in his district.

He pleaded guilty to criminal corruption charges after resigning abruptly from the City Council this summer. His arrest was part of a wider investigation into council members' use of discretionary funds to support nonprofit groups with which they had close ties.

Martinez admitted to approving false invoices and then receiving kickbacks from various groups. In one instance, he helped steer $163,000 to the Washington Heights Arts Center. With help from at least one employee, the group then provided Martinez with $15,000 that came directly from the organization's bank account.

​The NYPD is going to have to turn over thousands of pages of documents related to mass arrests and surveillance of protesters during the 2004 Republican National Convention, a federal judge ruled late Monday afternoon.

The ruling is in response to two federal lawsuits filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the widespread arrests, prolonged detention and fingerprinting of 1,806 convention protesters.

According to the NYCLU, the NYPD claimed that the treatment of those arrested and detained was based on an extensive surveillance operation conducted during the convention. The police department argued that disclosing the documents would compromise ongoing investigations.

Ninety one percent of people arrested during the RNC had the charges against them dropped, including hundreds who were exonerated when video recordings contradicted police accounts.

​The New York Post thinks it's found the tiniest studio in New York City. Reporter Angela Montefinise has a fun story about a couple sharing a 175-square-foot Upper West Side apartment with a couple of cats, but that place is a castle in comparison to the living situation we wrote about last month at 81 Bowery -- a lodging house for Chinese laborers located one block north of Canal Street.

At 81 Bowery, residents (largely Fujianese immigrants who work in the kitchens and construction sites of Chinatown) live in cubicles that are 64 square feet -- We know, because we checked with a tape measure.

Andy goes after another scammer.

​State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced this morning that he is suing a company he alleges scammed thousands of unemployed people with the promise of well-paid government jobs.

The official-sounding "State National Training Service", a New Jersey company, had contracted with the state of New York to provide study-at-home courses to people who had recently lost their jobs and were looking to pass civil service exams.

Cuomo says that students who enrolled paid $1,000 for a course that they were told would lead to a guaranteed government job with an average annual salary of $60,517. Passing a civil service exam, however, does not guarantee a job.

With the click of a mouse, you can now track the real mice infesting your neighborhood. The city's new Environmental Public Health Tracking Portal also gives you specific facts and figures about rats, cockroaches, air and water quality, and other woes.

You may have to tweak your computer's security settings to get the portal to work, but the Department of Health offers an easy step-by-step guide.

Once you're in, you can explore. Random surfing on the site reveals lots of pest problems in, among other places, central Brooklyn and the northwest Bronx. As a whole, many more Bronx children under 4 are hospitalized for asthma than in the city as a whole, the figures indicate. …More >>

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Between 1994 and 1999, Gilberto Salinas Doria -- formerly Officer Dora of the Donna, Texas Police Department -- arranged the delivery of at least 200 tons of cocaine to wholesale distributors in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania...

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