“You’re all dreaming.” Rose-Marie Welk had agreed to let me come interview her, but she made no bones about it—there was nothing to say. She was one of two clerks who had worked directly for Von Becker—fabricating the customer documents that maintained the smoke screen of his scam. The other clerk, Ben Tucker, had refused to talk to me at all. “I know nothing,” he had said before hanging up the phone. I couldn’t blame him—either of them—as they’d each served six months in federal prison.... We were sitting in the screened-in back porch of Rose-Marie’s house in East Rockaway, a block off Atlantic Avenue on a street of once-identical homes, now differentiated with fifty years of added colors, porches, stoops, dormers, and lawn statuary ranging from pink flamingos to the Blessed Mother. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy had not reached this far. Mr. Welk brought lemonade in a pitcher, making an awkward attempt at playing the good host.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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