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Philadelphia Pensions Paid To Felons

by: Rebel - Havertown, PA
started: 07/25/11 7:23 pm | updated: 07/25/11 7:23 pm

$1.2 million has been paid out from the city's cash-poor pension fund in benefits to felons since 1999. The fund, has less than 50 percent of the assets needed to pay projected benefits.

These felons are former Philadelphia police officers guilty of sexual encounters with minors, extortion conspiracy, and patronizing prostitutes.

The rules surrounding pension disqualification are complicated.

Under the city retirement code, you forfeit your pension if you are convicted of perjury, taking or giving bribes, corruption, theft, embezzlement or malfeasance in connection with your city job.

State rules also cover forgery, records-tampering, witness intimidation and oppression through your public job.

But, if you commit a crime with no clear ties to your public job, you may keep your pension.
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FORMER MOUNTED Police Officer Walter Helinsky lost his job, his freedom and his dignity eight years ago when he was convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl he met in a riding club.

Helinsky's young victim testified at his 2003 trial that the two had sexual contact at least 150 times - at the riding club, in his Oxford Circle home and on a police horse while he was wearing his uniform.

But although Helinsky, 69, served prison time and retired under a cloud of shame, he still gets his $2,827 monthly city pension, which began in 2002.
He's received more than $310,000, collecting even while he was behind bars.

"Somebody who is convicted of a felony offense and went to state prison for [that] conduct should forfeit their right to a pension, especially when it's a sexual offense against a child," said Jason Bologna, the prosecutor in Helinsky's case.

"I think part of the problem historically is there is no centralization on how we deal with pension issues," said the city's inspector general, Amy Kurland, a former federal prosecutor, who has sought to improve the process since taking the job in 2008. "There's a lot of places the ball could get dropped."

Kurland said Helinsky's pension would be reviewed to see if it met disqualification criteria. The city has also opened reviews on four other felons receiving pensions. The pensions of the remaining felons were either already under review or didn't meet the criteria for disqualification.

Another example is former Police Inspector Daniel Castro, who last month pleaded guilty to extortion conspiracy.

His attorney, Brian McMonagle, contends that the offense did not involve Castro's police job, meaning Castro should keep the $4,795.04 monthly pension he's been getting since November.

However, Castro was also convicted in April of lying to the FBI during an interview in his then-police office in South Philadelphia. If he keeps his pension and lives to 75, the most recent census projection for life expectancy for men, he could collect up to $2.2 million.

State and city rules don't list violent crime or sex crime as a cause for losing your pension, although if those crimes were committed in the course of official duties, they could come under "malfeasance in office." That could impact Helinsky, who was accused of molesting his victim while in uniform. But a sex crime or act of violence committed entirely on your own time doesn't eliminate your pension.

Former Police Officer Adrian Makuch pleaded guilty last year to to unlawful contact with a minor, attempting to lure a child into a motor vehicle and patronizing a prostitute. But because there was no connection to his city work, he gets to keep his $2,203 monthly pension, said Fran Bielli, executive director of the Board of Pensions.

"I don't even know that I'd call it a loophole," Kurland said. "This is the law. If the facts don't fit with that, then they don't. It's not really so much a loophole; it's whether you can argue the facts to fit the law. Sometimes it fits and sometimes it doesn't."