By Shayna Jacobs
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — Two city employees were indicted in two unrelated cases for allegedly scamming the city out of tens of thousands of dollars, the Manhattan district attorney announced Wednesday.
A custodian at Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School on 102nd Street created a phony job for his friend and submitted fraudulent time sheets to the Department of Education on the friend's behalf for two years, prosecutors said.
Custodian Philip Portelli, 33, who is currently on "rubber room" duty, and his long-time friend Paul Azzopardi, 28, were charged with defrauding the DOE out of more than $105,000.
In an unrelated indictment, Karen Frazier, a Department of Finance data entry clerk, allegedly ran a parking summons scam out of a Brooklyn bodega.
Frazier, 42, "wrote over 100 checks to the Department of Finance to pay for over 20 different motorists' summonses totaling approximately $24,000," according to court documents.
She even illegally dismissed six summonses entirely and wrote checks from her own bank account that would later bounce, prosecutors said.
Frazier made money by taking money from "clients" who believed they were paying reduced fines.
Instead their payments were going directly to Frazier, whose bounced checks left a paper trail the DA's office followed.
The defendants were ordered held on bail Wednesday at their arraignments.
