QUEENS

FATHER-SON COUNTERFEITING TEAM ARRESTED

A family-run counterfeiting operation specializing in fake $100 bills was dismantled yesterday after police arrested a father and his two sons on forgery charges.

Police arrested Yakub Yusupov, 45, and his sons Eduard Yusupov, 24, and Pinchas Yusupov, 19, at their Queens home just after they had just returned to America from a trip to Israel. The three Uzbek nationals and former Israeli residents are accused of running a massive counterfeit operation that pumped nearly $10 million in bogus currency into the economy over six years operating out of their video store at Jamaica, Queens.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees or anywhere legally outside of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing,” Raymond Kelly, the police commissioner, said. “It’s essential to crush any tampering with such a fundamental underpinning of the nation’s economy.”

Police began their investigation in 2003 after an informant arrested in a counterfeit compact disc and DVD operation tipped them off to the money-manufacturing scheme at the video store.

Since 1999, police have confiscated close to $7 million of the operation’s faux currency, but believe that $2.5 million more could still be in circulation.

– Special to the Sun

MAN FOUND STRANGLED IN ALLEYWAY

A Queens man discovered a dead body late Tuesday evening after he ran over it with his car, police said.

Just before midnight Tuesday, a resident hit an unusual bump in the road as he pulled into an alley off of Leslie Road at Jamaica, Queens, to park his car. When he got out of his car to see what he had struck, he found the fully clothed remains of young man in his 20s wrapped in a plastic garbage bag with his hands tied behind his back, police said. Neighborhood residents said that though illegal dumping and prostitution were frequent in the dark alley, the area is generally considered safe.

“Sometimes, we do hear that that there is prostitution going on back there, or a homeless person trying to sleep,” Ladora Davis, a nearby resident, said. “This is the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve seen anything like this.”

Though the man remain unidentified yesterday, an autopsy showed that he had been strangled to death, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman from the medical examiner’s office.

– Special to the Sun

MANHATTAN

COUNCIL PLEDGES $250,000 FOR CHINATOWN WELCOME GATE

The three Manhattan tourist neighborhoods of Greenwich Village, Little Italy, and Chinatown all blend together, some visitors say. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when you leave one and enter another.

That will change when Chinatown gets a welcome gate, said business advocates in the neighborhood. The actual site hasn’t been picked yet, but the proposed arch for the downtown neighborhood would be 45 feet high and about 80 feet long.

It’s expected to take about a year and a half to be built, and City Council officials said it has $250,000 to put toward the gate that is estimated to cost a total of $1.5 million. New York’s Chinatown is the largest in the Western Hemisphere, but unlike the Chinatowns at Philadelphia, Boston, and San Francisco, it doesn’t have a welcome gate.

– Associated Press

ALBANY

BROOKLYN ASSEMBLYMAN SPONSORS ‘TERRI’S LAW’

William Colton, a Democratic state assemblyman who represents Brooklyn, told the New York Post that he wants to make it more difficult to pull a feeding tube if a patient’s wishes are in question, the newspaper’s Web site reported last night.

Mr. Colton has introduced “Terri’s Law” – a bill prohibiting the removal of a feeding tube without the patient’s written consent, according to the Web site article. Ultimately, Mr. Colton said he wants New York to be able to avoid ugly fights like the recent Theresa Schiavo case in Florida. That is why he’s calling the bill “Terri’s Law,” Mr. Colton told the Post.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun