Police found 10 handguns, two assault rifles, nine shotguns and nine rifles in the suspects’ two-story home on West Street. Authorities also found on the premises two Crossman air rifles, one umbrella with a dagger in the handle, one sword, one machete, three daggers and one hunting knife.

Numerous pills, a large amount of ammunition and ingredients for making ammunition were also found on the premises, according to police. Sources said the weapons were not being sold.

The Sianos’ house is directly across the street from P.S. 216, which teaches pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade students. Neighbors said the family had a reputation for drunkenness and for being gun enthusiasts. “It’s outrageous and it’s shocking. Right next to a school, when someone tells you that they find this kind of stuff in a house, especially when you have all these young kids around. They play ball on the streets,” said one local.

“I knew them since they were kids, since they grew up. I knew the mother,” said another. “All I knew was that they used to drink. They drink, that’s all.” “I just don’t think it’s anything, other than they’re just troublemakers,” said a third.

Sources said the father and son seemed to be responsible for the guns.

After the housing market went bust, the FHA became the major source of funding for first-time homebuyers. But the agency, which insures roughly 30 percent of new loans, has seen its losses rise dramatically. While the agency has avoided a taxpayer rescue so far, its reserves have sunk below the minimum level required by Congress.

There also have been fears that subprime lenders have shifted their business to the FHA after the subprime business went bust.

The agency has already taken action against several problem lenders. One of the nation’s biggest mortgage bankers, Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Co. of Ocala, Fla., was banned from the FHA program in August and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Another mortgage company, Lend America, was kicked out in November.

On Tuesday, Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general, Kenneth Donohue, said he wanted to determine why defaults are so elevated among the 15 companies being probed and whether any have committed fraud.

“Many of these target loans didn’t last but a short time before defaulting,” Donohue said. “We will conduct an investigation, if appropriate, to determine who is responsible and will recommend that appropriate action be taken against individuals and corporations.”

The FHA does not make loans, but rather offers insurance against default. Borrowers are willing to pay for the insurance because FHA loans only require down payments of 3.5 percent of the purchase price.

The lenders targeted by FHA officials include some of its worst-performing active lenders. For example, almost one in five loans made by Alethes LLC of Lakeway, Texas, over the past two years went into default, compared with a national average of about 5 percent.

“We are reviewing each of these files to determine what commonalities there are, if any,” said Danny Smith, president of Alethes, wrote in an e-mail. He later added that the subpoena requested “information which has already been provided.”
Two other FHA lenders being scrutinized, Alacrity Lending Co. of Southlake, Texas and Pine State Mortgage Corp. of Atlanta, each had default rates of about 15 percent.

“We intend to comply and get as much information to them as fast as we can,” said Lonnie Brantley, chief executive of Alacrity.

The government inquiry, he said, applied to a small portion of the company’s loans, and attributed the company’s high default rate to “bad economic times.”

Pine State Mortgage could not be immediately reached for comment and the company’s Web site was down Tuesday afternoon.

The largest lender under the FHA’s magnifying glass was First Tennessee Bank, a subsidiary of Memphis, Tenn.-based First Horizon National Corp. A spokesman said the company sold its mortgage division in August 2008 and scaled back dramatically on new FHA loans since then. That could be artificially inflating the company’s default rate because the company is making fewer new FHA loans.

The crackdown was welcomed by John Courson, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association. “We’re concerned about the viability of the program and we want to make sure that the bad apples and the bad players, frankly, are eliminated,” he said.

• PROVIDERS DID NOT TRANSITION CLIENTS TO PERMANENT HOUSING IN A TIMELY MANNER – 62 percent of clients at Pilgrim Icahn resided in transitional housing for more than the nine month average, costing DHS $4.3 million (one client remained for over six years, costing DHS $234,397). 22 percent of clients at Aladdin Hotel resided beyond the nine month average stay, costing DHS $1.4 million (one client remained for over four years, costing DHS $118,933). “The City is cutting proven programs that help to prevent homelessness, while at the same time spending taxpayer dollars to shelter New Yorkers in unsafe, over-priced hotel rooms that do not effectively reduce homelessness,” said Public Advocate BILL DE BLASIO. “It is time to end this irresponsible practice and implement practical policies that will help prevent homelessness and move more people from shelter to stable, permanent housing.”
“As homelessness increases and New Yorkers struggle to make ends meet,
it is now more important than ever to be watchful of agency performance and efficiency,” said Councilmember YDANIS RODRIGUEZ, member of the City Council General Welfare Committee. “There are disturbing inequities going on within DHS, and they must shape up if it is to provide real and valuable services to those who are being hit hardest by the recession.”

“Just because you’re homeless doesn’t mean you should live a life
without dignity, said MARY BROSNAHAN, Executive Director of the
Coalition for the Homeless. “Our most vulnerable neighbors need to be
helped back on their feet and moved into permanent housing, not
relegated to squalor.”

“These findings are disconcerting on many levels,” said JUDITH
GOLDINER, Supervising Attorney, Law Reform Unit, Legal Aid Society.
“DHS must provide livable, clean space for the City’s increasing
homeless population. By failing to adequately monitor providers, DHS
has shortchanged the city’s homeless, and taxpayers throughout the
city. Such waste is unacceptable in any climate, and it is even more
harmful during a time of economic strife.”

Previous audits and letters by the Comptroller’s Office in June 1998,
October 2003, June 2007 and June 2008 had also cited DHS for its
failure to contract formally with providers for shelter and social
services.

The recommendations made by Comptroller Liu to DHS include:
• Enter into contracts with all providers of shelter and social
services that delineate services to be provided, establish performance
standards, and provide termination clauses and remedies.
• Immediately institute a sound and effective system of internal
controls and monitor providers to ensure that they accurately record
and report client-lodging days. These controls should include, but not
be limited to, conducting random, periodic inspections of client
sign-in logs.
• Pay providers only for shelter and social services and calculate
provider payments based on accurate client-lodging data and
mutually-agreed-upon daily rates.
• Conduct unannounced periodic site inspections and interviews with
clients and staff.
• Work with providers that consistently fail to meet placement targets
to improve their performance.

Comptroller Liu credited Deputy Comptroller for Audit H. Tina Kim and
her team in the Bureau of Audit for presenting the findings and
recommendations. The full March 2010 audit report is available at
www.comptroller.nyc.gov.

###

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is suing two non-profits — International Immigrants Foundation and International Professional Association — for allegedly scamming immigrants by making false promises of citizenship and charging exorbitant fees.

The suit also says the organizations are practicing law without authorization.Cuomo says the law protects someone who blows the whistle on immigration scams, but many immigrants are afraid of exposing themselves to prosecution.

“People don’t want to come forward. Well, we have an executive order. I know, technically we have an executive order. People feel — my luck, I’ll be the one, I’ll call, I’ll get into trouble. Because it’s remarkable: years and years, thousands of people victimized. Nobody came forward,” Cuomo said.

Cuomo has obtained a temporary restraining order against the two firms and their president, Edward Juarez, halting their services.

In a statement, the International Immigrants Foundation, says the allegations are quote “outrageous” and were made by Cuomo to “support his political ambitions.”

However, Internal Revenue Service records show the group has a lackluster history of accounting for its finances, and that the organization has paid the performer and his business partner at least $410,000 for rent, production services, and Jean’s appearance at a benefit concert.

Though the Wyclef Jean Foundation, which does business as Yele Haiti Foundation, was incorporated 12 years ago–and has been active since that time–the group only first filed tax returns in August 2009.

That month, the foundation provided the IRS with returns covering calendar years 2005, 2006, and 2007–the only periods for which it has publicly provided a glimpse at its financial affairs.

In 2006, Jean’s charity reported contributions of $1 million, the bulk of which came from People’s Magazine in exchange for the first photos of a pregnant Angelina Jolie (the actress reportedly directed that the publication’s payment go to Jean’s charity, not her personally).

The foundation’s 2006 tax return, the group paid $31,200 in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Jerry Duplessis, who, like Jean, is a foundation board member. A $31,200 rent payment was also made in 2007 to Platinum Sound. The rent, tax returns assure, “is priced below market value.” The recording studio also was paid $100,000 in 2006 for the “musical performance services of Wyclef Jean at a benefit concert.”

Jean denounced charges that he misappropriated funds from his charity, Yele Haiti, and defended the foundation and his commitment to Haiti relief efforts.

“Let me be clear: I denounce any allegation that I have ever profited personally through my work with Yele Haiti,” Jean said in a statement released Saturday. “These baseless attacks are simply not true.” Jean vigorously defended himself in a YouTube video posted Saturday.

“After digging kids up and finding cemeteries for them … this is what I come back to, an attack on my integrity and my foundation,” Jean said in the video.

He went on to explain that the charges were business expenses for Yele Haiti’s fundraising efforts. “You can’t put a show together without a production. You need lights, you need a stage … All of these things have to be accounted for,” he said.

That six-figure payout, the tax return noted, “was substantially less than market value.” The return, of course, does not address why Jean needed to be paid to perform at his own charity’s fundraiser. But the largest 2006 payout–a whopping $250,000–went to Telemax, S.A., a for-profit Haiti company in which Jean and Duplessis were said to “own a controlling interest.”

The former operator of a New Jersey Clifton-based real estate investment program pleaded guilty recently to operating a Ponzi-scheme in which she raised in excess of $15 million from hundreds of investors in New Jersey and throughout the United States, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. said.

Marcia Sladich, 51, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden to a one-count Information charging her with mail fraud in connection with the fraudulent real estate scheme Sladich orchestrated and ran from 2004 through December 2007.

Judge Hayden scheduled sentencing for Nov. 24. Sladich remains in custody, where she has been since her arrest last August. The mail fraud charge to which Sladich pleaded guilty carries a statutory maximum penalty of 20 years in federal prison and fine of $250,000 or twice the aggregate loss to any victim or aggregate gain to Sladich.

However, under the advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, Sladich faces an actual sentencing range of between 63 and 78 months in federal prison. The Sentencing Guidelines are advisory only, and Judge Hayden has discretion to sentence within or outside of that sentencing range.